Playing James Bond
by Joe's girl
Summary: What happens when the Bauer and Almeida children decide to play spy? They might just stumble onto a terrorist plot and find themselves in more danger than they ever imagined. Can Jack and Tony find them in time? EPILOGUE ADDED!
1. Chapter 1

_Okay, since my last story (There For Me – about Tony's relationship with Jen) went over like a lead balloon, I thought I'd try a different subject. (BTW, thanks to those few of you who read and reviewed that story. Your reviews were wonderful!)_

_This story takes place about 10 years after S3. It is a sequel to my story Carnival Town. You don't have to read that story to understand this. I'll make sure I fill you in on the details when necessary._

_As always, I don't own any of the major characters. They all belong to Fox. If you take the time to read, please review. It only takes a second and it makes me really, really happy! When I'm happy I write better, so it's in your best interest to review! (How about that for convoluted logic?) _

**PLAYING JAMES BOND**

Chapter 1

"Uncle Jack," said a small voice from behind Jack Bauer, "were you and Daddy really spies?"

Jack was sitting at the desk in his den working on a proposal for a client. He took off his reading glasses and turned to look at the source of the voice. "Who told you that, Carmen?" he asked four year old Carmen Almeida.

Carmen was the youngest of Tony and Michelle's three children. She could light up a room just by walking in it. Spending time with Carmen always made Jack regret not having another daughter. About three years after their second son was born, Jack had suggested to Kate that they try one more time for a daughter.

"Jack," Kate rationalized, "you already have a daughter. I'm perfectly satisfied with our two boys and we're getting too old to have more children. What if the next one is another boy? Are we going to try again in three years? You have granddaughters now. Let's be satisfied with that." Kate was referring to Kim and Chase's daughters, Angela and Tess.

Jack knew that Kate was right. He adored his sons, Mason, who was ten, and Ryan, who would be eight next week. But at the same time, whenever he was with Carmen he found himself just a little bit jealous of Tony and Michelle.

Jack picked Carmen up and set her on his lap. She had huge brown eyes shaded with thick lashes. Her long, thick hair was black and wavy, not curly like Michelle's, but wavy. It was pulled back in French braids which accentuated her striking features. Tony, you better look out, Jack thought, because this little girl is going to break a million hearts and yours is the first one on the list.

Unlike her older brother, Ricardo, nicknamed Rico, and her sister Lucy, who had Tony's darker complexion to go with their dark hair and eyes, Carmen's skin was a fine porcelain color just a shade darker than Michelle's. Carmen was a girl in every way. While her older sister played soccer and climbed trees with the boys and kept her curly hair cut into a short bob, Carmen spent hours playing mother to her dolls and stuffed animals, carefully feeding and dressing and tending to their needs. She was delicate like a flower and always dressed in pastel colors.

"Who told you that your dad and I were spies?" Jack asked.

"Mason and Rico say that you were and I don't believe them. They say you were just like James Boone."

"James Boone?" Jack asked unable to keep from smiling. "Carmen, do you mean James Bond?"

"Yeah, that's it! James Bond," she said brightly her dimples deepening with her smile. She had Michelle's smile. "Mason said if I didn't believe them that I should come and ask you for myself. Besides, I didn't want to play their silly old game anyway."

"What game were they playing?"

"They were spies and they had to go to the volcano to rescue someone." Mount St. Helens, not far away, was threatening to erupt and the children were fascinated by it. The volcano had become the central point of all of their play.

"Who did they have to rescue?" Jack asked her.

"They had to rescue the dancer in the dress," Carmen answered.

"The dancer in the dress?" Jack said he brow furrowed in confusion.

"Yeah, Rico says that they have to rescue her before the bad guy throws her into the volcano."

"Oh," Jack said suddenly understanding, "do you mean the 'damsel in distress'?"

"That's right!" Carmen exclaimed. "They wanted me to be the girl they rescued. I told them that I didn't need to be rescued and that I wanted to play with my dolls, so I came back."

"Wait a minute," Jack said with concern, "you came back from where? Where are the others?"

"Playing in the clearing," Carmen told him. She was referring to an area about a hundred yards through the woods behind Jack and Kate's house.

"Carmen, did you walk back from the clearing by yourself?"

"No, I had Frankie with me," she answered pointing to the Bauer's Border collie who was now sleeping on the rug near Jack's feet.

"Sweetie, you shouldn't walk all that way by yourself. Next time you want to come back from the clearing, one of the older kids has to walk with you," he told her.

"It's not that far," she said with a pout, "and, besides, you can't get lost if you stay on the path. Daddy says that I'm a big girl now that I don't suck my thumb any more."

Jack's face softened. "I know you're a big girl, Carmen, but I still think it's safer if someone walks with you. Okay?"

"I guess," Carmen said with a pout. She held her thumb near her mouth as if she was contemplating sucking it after being admonished, albeit gently, by Jack. She suddenly remembered what she just said about "being a big girl" and pulled the thumb abruptly away from her face. "Can you read me a story?"

"Sure," Jack told her. "What would you like to read?"

Carmen brightened up and jumped off his lap narrowly missing Frankie who yelped in surprise and decided that his current resting place wasn't safe anymore. It was time to move on. The dog stood lazily and ambled off to the floor in front of the fireplace and lay down on the cool tile. "Let's read 'Madeline'. I'll go get it." Carmen ran off to the next room to retrieve the book from her backpack.

Jack smiled and got up slowly from his desk chair. He put his hand on the desk for support. The first step was always the hardest, after that he was usually fine. Jack had been shot in the line of duty a little more than ten years ago, just months before Mason was born. He was hit three times. One of the bullets lodged near his spine. He was so unstable at first that the doctors made a decision to remove the other two bullets and leave that one alone until he stabilized. By the time they removed the bullet from his back a week later, it had done irreparable damage. He was left with some paralysis in his left leg. After months of physical therapy, he learned to walk again, but with a definite limp.

Carmen came running back into the room with not one, but four "Madeline" books. Jack had read the same books to Kim 25 years ago. It always brought back memories. "Let's go out onto the back porch and read," Jack suggested to Carmen.

"Okay," Carmen called behind her as she ran for the back door. She opened the door and held it for Jack. She waited patiently while he put his hand on the doorframe for support and stepped down onto the painted wood porch. "Can we sit on the porch swing?"

"Sounds perfect," Jack told her as he went toward it. He sat down and helped Carmen up. She immediately climbed into his lap. Jack was less than half way through the first book when he looked down to find that Carmen was sound asleep with her head propped against his chest. Trying to keep up with the older kids had obviously tired little Carmen out. Jack shifted her weight slightly so he was more comfortable and he continued to move the swing slowly back and forth rocking the child in the warm summer air.

When Kate first moved to Seattle she bought a small two story Cape Cod style house just outside the city and about 20 minutes from her office. It was big enough for her and the baby she was carrying at the time. At that point Jack wasn't in the picture. They had broken up several months earlier not knowing that Kate was pregnant. She stubbornly refused to tell Jack about the baby and moved to Seattle. When Jack was shot, she returned to LA to be by his side. The decision was made to reconcile and they married and moved to Seattle together. They lived in Kate's house for the first year, but negotiating the stairs was always a problem for Jack. They decided to build a ranch style home a little further out. They bought about two acres of land that backed up to a pine forest which eventually let to foothills and mountains. It was amazingly private but yet conveniently close to Seattle.

The chain on the swing creaked rhythmically. Jack listened to the creaking of the swing and the birds singing and inhaled deeply enjoying the freshness of the air, the smell of the pine from the forest behind the house. It was never like this in LA, he thought. Life was never so peaceful or calm and the air was never this fresh. It made him sad in a way to realize that it had taken him the first forty years of his life to find real happiness. He thought he was happy when he and Teri were first married and Kim was little, but not nearly as happy as he was now.

He had resigned from CTU shortly after being shot. He wasn't sure what he was going to do next, but he knew that he couldn't go back to CTU, not if his relationship with Kate had any chance of succeeding. He and Kate moved to Seattle where she ran the local office of Warner Enterprises. When they first moved, Jack was too busy with physical therapy to worry about what he would do for a living. In his mind, he needed to be able to walk again in order to be the kind of husband and father he wanted to be.

Once he finished that, he spent most of his time taking care of Mason. Jack was enjoying being a house husband when an old acquaintance who now ran security at an airport near Seattle asked him to look over their security procedures and make recommendations for improvements. That simple, one-time request turned into a whole new career for Jack. Security for airports, shopping malls, skyscrapers, convention centers and a host of other facilities was being scrutinized by the public following terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad. Once word got out that someone with Jack's expertise was available for revamping security protocols, he was inundated with requests and job offers. He was so overwhelmed that he asked Tony to go into the business with him. Tony was reluctant at first. He had a secure job with a software company that he liked, although he admitted wasn't much of a challenge. Kate guaranteed that even if the business with Jack failed, she would always have a job for him with Warner Enterprises. Tony eventually agreed and he and Jack became not only friends but business partners. In the agreement, Tony owned 60 percent of the company to Jack's 40 percent. It was set up that way at Jack's request. Kate's job was demanding and Jack didn't want to work full time. He limited his time to four days a week, one of which he would work from home, and didn't do any travel that required more than an overnight stay. Tony, on the other hand, needed the full time job and was not opposed to travel.

It was an arrangement begun ten years ago with little more than a handshake. They hired an office assistant and Kate gave them some office space rent free for the first six months. After that modest start, they now occupied an entire floor of an office building and had fifteen employees. Jack tried to get Chase to come on board with them, but he and Kim preferred to stay in LA. He had transferred from CTU to District and was rapidly moving up the bureaucratic ladder. Instead they had been able to hire a couple of other former CTU employees who had grown tired of the stresses of their jobs and the hustle and bustle of life in LA.

It was nearly 5 o'clock and Carmen had just started to wake up when Michelle came to pick up the children. Jack called to her to let her know that they were on the back porch. Michelle rounded the corner and climbed up the back steps. She hadn't changed much over the years. Still thin and pretty, she wore her curly, auburn hair shorter now. It was loose and tucked behind her ears. She had taken off the suit jacket she had been wearing this morning when she dropped the kids off.

"Hi Mommy!" Carmen called as Michelle stepped up onto the porch. She liked the way her mother's high heels clicked on the wooden steps.

"Hi Sweet Pea," Michelle called back. "Are you and Uncle Jack reading a story?"

"We started to, but I fell asleep," Carmen admitted as she slipped off of Jack's lap and ran to her mother. Michelle took her daughter in her arms. She was so different from their other two children. Rico and Lucy already hated being hugged and kissed in public. Carmen was still little and snuggly.

"Where are Rico and Lucy?" Michelle asked.

"They're still playing in the clearing with Ryan and Mason," Carmen told her.

"Why don't you get your toys and books and put them in your backpack. Then we'll walk back to the clearing and get them." Carmen agreed and went into the house to gather her things.

Moments later Loretta, the Bauer's housekeeper, leaned out of the back door. "Oh, hello Mrs. Almeida. I didn't realize that you were here," she said.

"Hi, Loretta," Michelle responded. "I just got here. Were the kids good today?"

"They're always good. When the four older ones are together you don't even know that they're here. They go off and play and you never hear a thing from them until they get hungry," she said with a smile. Loretta was a bit of an eccentric lady in her 60's. She had snow white hair stylishly cropped very short and she had the bluest eyes that Michelle had ever seen. She had been with the Bauers since they moved from LA and was almost like another grandmother to Mason and Ryan. Loretta looked at Jack, "Mr. Bauer, I was getting ready to leave. Can I get you and Mrs. Almeida anything before I go? I just brewed some iced tea if either of you would like some."

They both indicated that they would like iced tea and Loretta disappeared into the kitchen.

"I hope the kids weren't any trouble, Jack," Michelle said.

"They were fine, Michelle. Like Loretta said, I barely knew they were here."

"You're a lifesaver! I can't thank you enough," Michelle told him. She had called Kate just after 7 o'clock that morning. Tony was in San Francisco working with airport officials at SFO on a major security upgrade. Michelle worked part time out of their home providing computer services, web site design and administrative functions to small businesses. She occasionally had to meet with clients and had scheduled an all day meeting with a company whose computer systems she was upgrading. She had arranged for a baby sitter to watch the kids for the day, but the sitter called at ten minutes to seven to tell Michelle that she couldn't make it. Michelle frantically called Kate to see if she knew a baby sitter that could be called on short notice. Jack answered the phone and told Michelle that he would be working from home that day and to bring the kids over. He never minded having all of the kids at his house. Besides that, he had learned long ago that if the boys had friends over, they would go off and play and he would get more work done.

"What did they do all day?" Michelle asked.

"They played ball out back for about an hour or so, then they asked Loretta if she would pack them a lunch and they all went back to the clearing. They haven't been back since. Carmen came back around 2 o'clock. By the way, she walked back from the clearing by herself. I told her that next time one of the older kids needs to walk back with her," Jack told Michelle.

The clearing was a large meadow that was bordered on three sides by woods and on the fourth side by a stream. July and August were always dry months in Seattle but this year they had been drier than most leaving the stream only a couple of inches deep. The kids liked to kick off their shoes and walk along the creek bed. By lunch they ended up soaked despite the small amount of water in the stream and they would sit in the sun on towels and eat lunch while they dried off. After lunch either a soccer ball or baseball would be pulled from a backpack and they would spend much of the afternoon playing ball until hunger again set in and they came back to the house in search of food. Carmen usually followed them to play in the stream but she would tire out by lunchtime and want to play quietly with her dolls.

Michelle nodded. "I agree. I'll remind Rico and Lucy about it."

"Oh, one other thing," Jack started. "Apparently the boys are on a 'spy' kick again. Carmen asked me if it was true that Tony and I were spies."

"Was Lucy playing, too?"

"From what Carmen said she was. I'm sure she was just going along with the boys."

"I'll talk to Rico and Lucy," Michelle said with a sigh. Why did CTU always have to come back to haunt her? She and Jack and Tony rarely talked about their former line of work. It had come up in a discussion a couple of years ago and Mason and Rico picked up on it. They immediately equated their fathers to James Bond and any other cool spy they could think of. Kate thought it was harmless fun for little boys, but for Jack and Tony and Michelle, it was an all too clear reminder of their CTU years. They didn't want their sons glorifying intelligence work to make it seem like an adventure. They didn't follow arch criminals to exotic islands and scuba dive with beautiful women and have an inventor in the basement supplying them with exploding pens or cars that could throw up smoke screens. James Bond had never spent a sleepless night in Kosovo huddled in a frigid stream keeping watch on the house of a local warlord. He hadn't watched as his colleagues who had wives and children die when the operation blew up in their collective faces. James Bond had never been shot in the neck trying to apprehend a suspect nor had he been exposed to a potentially fatal virus. No, Jack and Tony and Michelle didn't want their children playing spy games and the children had been told that.

"I'm surprised the kids aren't back by now," Michelle said as Loretta came out onto the porch with two iced teas and a plate of fresh oatmeal raisin cookies.

"I'm not," Jack said with a smile. "They never come back until they get hungry and Loretta packed enough food for an army."

"They're growing children, Mr. Bauer," Loretta said with her hands on her hips as if to make a point. "I've been taking care of children for over forty years and in all those years, not one child in my care ever starved to death. I'm not about to start now! Plenty of food and plenty of water keep children healthy."

As usual, Michelle was amused by Loretta. "What all did you pack, Loretta?"

"Just a few sandwiches…"

"A few!" Jack exclaimed unable to control his laughter. "There were five kids and fifteen sandwiches!"

"Go on, Mr. Bauer!" Loretta said with an exasperated look on her face. "I did not pack fifteen sandwiches. I just wanted them to have a variety. You know, some ham and cheese, chicken, a couple of peanut butter and jelly, that's all. Then I put in some hard boiled eggs and apples and cherries and some of the cookies that I baked."

"Only about half the batch," Jack added trying to egg Loretta on. "Let's see, and then there was the fresh trail mix that you made and some celery stuffed with peanut butter, not to mention the juice and water to wash it all down. The list is endless, Michelle."

"Well at least I won't have to fix any dinner tonight," Michelle laughed as Loretta went back inside to get ready to leave for the day. "Were you and Kate planning on taking the kids to the Asian Heritage Festival downtown this weekend?"

"I think Kate is going. With Tony out of town this week I've got a lot of work at the office. I was planning on driving into the city with them but I think I'm going to go to the office and work while Kate and the boys go to the festival."

"I talked to Tony today. He may be stuck in San Francisco until Sunday, so I'll talk to Kate. She and I can take the kids." Michelle looked at her watch. "We better go, Carmen. Do you want to walk back to the clearing with me to get Rico and Lucy?"

"You don't have to walk back there. They'll come when I whistle," Jack told her. He made a circle of his thumb and forefinger, put them in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. "They'll whistle back to let me know they heard me."

Jack and Michelle listened for a minute but didn't hear a return whistle. Jack whistled again. "I guess they don't feel like coming home," he said knowing what it was like to be a little boy who was engrossed in play.

A minute or two later the children still hadn't returned Jack's whistle. "I guess I'm going to have to walk back there."

"Wait a second, Jack," Michelle said. "I have a change of shoes in the car. I'll get them and come with you."

Michelle walked to her car and exchanged her business heels with a pair of flat walking shoes. "Come on, Carmen. Let's take a walk."

By then Jack had reached inside of the house and grabbed his cane. Although he was steady on flat ground, the path to the clearing was uneven enough to cause him to lose his balance. He would make better time with the cane. Michelle met him a step or two from the porch and they made their way across the long back yard and onto the path to the clearing.

Kate arrived home soon after Jack and Michelle had left. Loretta was just about to leave as Kate walked in the front door. They exchanged greetings and pleasantries.

"I saw Michelle's car in the driveway. Are she and Jack out back?" Kate asked.

"No, ma'am," Loretta explained. "The children didn't come when Mr. Bauer whistled so he and Mrs. Almeida went back to the clearing looking for them."

"They didn't come when Jack whistled?" Kate said looking vaguely concerned. "I bet Jack wasn't happy."

"No, ma'am, not happy at all. I'm not sure I'd want to be either of those boys when Mr. Bauer gets a hold of them."

Kate smiled. Jack had a whole lot of bark and not much bite. He tried to be a strict disciplinarian but deep down he was an old softie. Still, their lack of response to Jack's whistle caused Kate a twinge of concern. Neither of the boys liked to incur Jack's wrath even if in the end he carried out little of the promised discipline. So they rarely disobeyed him. Kate quickly pushed the thought from her mind and thought about Jack walking through the woods to the clearing. "I hope Jack took his cane. The last time he tried to walk to the clearing without a cane he lost his balance and fell. It took three stitches to close the cut over his eye."

"I remember, ma'am, and I suspect he did, too, because he came in and got his cane before he left."

"Oh, good," Kate said slightly relieved. "I'm going to take advantage of a couple of minutes of quiet and change my clothes. You run along, Loretta. Have a good weekend and I'll see you on Monday."

Kate made her way back to the master bedroom suite. The room felt a little stuffy so she opened the sliding glass door that led out to the back porch which ran the entire length of the house. While she changed clothes in the adjoining dressing room, she heard Jack's familiar whistle. He had been calling the boys that way since they were four or five years old and she hadn't ever remembered them failing to respond. At first they just came running back but in the last couple of years Mason had learned to whistle back to let his father know that he had heard the summons. She stood still waiting to hear Mason's return whistle but heard nothing. Now wearing a pair of cropped jeans and knit tee shirt Kate stepped into a pair of sandals and walked out the back door and toward the path to the clearing.

Carmen trotted ahead of Jack and Michelle along the path to the clearing. She stepped into the meadow ahead of the adults. "Rico! Lucy!" she called. "It's time to go home." She started running across the meadow just as Michelle stepped out from under the canopy of trees that lined the path. "They must be playing hide and seek," Carmen said taking in the empty clearing. "Come out! Come out wherever you are!" she shouted.

Jack had joined Michelle now and was surveying the field. It was completely empty except for the cooler in which Loretta had packed the lunch feast. It sat near the stream but there was otherwise no sign of the children. All four of them had backpacks that contained beach towels and whatever balls or baseball gloves they decided to carry. Even the backpacks were no where to be found.

Jack opened the cooler and looked inside. It was empty except for the wrappings and plastic bags that Loretta had used when she packed the lunch.

"Carmen," Jack said, "after lunch was there any food left in the cooler?"

"Yeah, lots of it," she answered. "Miss Loretta packed a lot of food."

"Did they say anything about going off to play at a neighbor's house or give you any idea that they might leave the clearing?" Jack asked her.

"I told you Uncle Jack. They were going to the volcano," she said innocently not understanding that Mount Saint Helens was too far away for them to walk.

Jack looked at Michelle who looked something between worried and angry. "Jack, do you think they put the food into their backpacks and wandered off into the woods?"

"I think they might have," Jack said realistically. "On the other hand, if one of the neighbor kids came by, they might have just decided to play at their house and forgot to tell me where they were going."

"I don't think they would have emptied the cooler or left it here if they were going to a neighbor's house. I'm worried, Jack," Michelle said.

Jack looked down at the ground before speaking. "Me, too," he admitted.


	2. Chapter 2

_Hi everybody and thanks for the great reviews! Special thanks to Katmeister who gave me a geography lesson (Sorry, Kat, I live on the east coast! You know us east-coasters, we think the country stops at the Mississippi River!). Mount St. Helen's is in Washington not Oregon. I'll go back and edit chapter 1._

Chapter 2

"Rico! Mason! Wait up!" called an out of breath Lucy Almeida. "We need a drink."

The two older boys turned around to see that Ryan and Lucy had stopped about 15 yards behind them. They had both removed their backpacks and were pulling out bottles of water. Lucy sat down on a large rock and Ryan leaned against a tree. Both were clearly exhausted from trying to keep up with their older brothers.

"This is like taking Carmen on a walk," Rico complained. "She has to stop every five minutes."

Rico and Mason stopped walking. The two stood together, a study in contrasts. Rico had dark curly hair and large brown eyes. He was clearly his father's son, looking almost exactly as Tony had at the same age. Like his father, he wasn't overly tall for his age, but had a square, sturdy build. Mason, on the other hand, was as blond as Rico was dark. He had fair skin and blue eyes to go with straight blond hair that he kept cut short like his father's. Mason was more of a mix of his parents than Rico was. He had Jack's eyes and nose, but his smile definitely belonged to the Warner side of the family. In fact, his smile put most people in the mind of his grandfather, Bob Warner.

"Give me a break, Rico!" Lucy said angrily. "We've been walking for a long time. This is the first time we've stopped." Lucy opened the water bottle and glared at her brother. She was a pretty girl with her father's dark coloring and her mother's heart shaped face. She had inherited an innate athletic ability from both of them that made her a natural at most sports.

"It hasn't been that long," he snapped back.

"Check your watch, Mr. Know-it-all. We left around 2 o'clock. I bet we've been gone at least two hours."

"No way!" Mason and Rico hooted in unison.

"It just seems later here because all of the trees make it darker," Rico told her.

"So what time is it?" Lucy asked.

Rico relented and looked at his watch. "Wow! It's after 5."

"Get out," Mason said in disbelief. He reached for Rico's wrist and pulled it up so he could see the watch. "It's almost 5:30. I guess we lost track of time."

Indeed the four children had lost track of time. They were so engrossed in their spy adventure that they hadn't realized how much time had passed.

"We've gotta get back, Rico. Mom said she'd pick us up around 5," Lucy reminded him.

Rico agreed and they all turned around and started back over the tree covered hill that they had just climbed. They backtracked over the hill and around a big tree that they all remembered then started across what appeared to be a familiar flat area. They walked quickly for about 15 minutes knowing that they were going to be very late getting home and their parents were not going to be happy.

Ryan was the first to speak. "Mason, are you sure this is the way home?"

"I think so," he assured his younger brother. "I remember that bush over there. How about you, Ric?"

Rico was less sure of himself. "I'm not sure. You and Ryan play back here more than we do. I thought you knew the way."

"I thought I did, too," Mason admitted as they continued to walk.

"Wait a minute," said the always cautious Ryan, "are you telling me that we just walked for the last 3 hours and we don't know where we are?"

"In other words, we're lost," Lucy said succinctly.

"I don't think we're exactly 'lost'," Rico said trying to sound unconcerned about their present situation.

"Then what are we?" Lucy asked sharply.

"Relax, Lucy. If we just keep going in this direction, I'm sure we'll find our way back."

Lucy was unconvinced and trying hard not to be scared as they continued to walk through the woods.

Kate met Jack and Michelle on the path leading back to the house from the clearing. She leaned over and stole a quick kiss from Jack and said hello to Michelle and Carmen. "Where are the kids?" she asked.

"They weren't in the clearing," Jack told her. "We need to call all of the neighbors and see if they're playing at someone's house."

"That's probably it, Jack," Kate said. "I bet they went to the Willis'. They have a new puppy and the boys were playing with him yesterday. I bet they wanted to show Lucy and Rico."

Kate and Jack proceeded to call every family that lived on their cul-de-sac and several more on the main road about a half mile away and no one had seen any of the children that day. After hanging up from calling the last house of the street, Jack looked at Kate and Michelle. His deep blue eyes were filled with concern. "We need to call the police," Jack told them in what Michelle recognized immediately as his command voice at CTU. She hadn't heard that voice in 10 years, but it came back immediately and caused chills to run down her spine. She shivered involuntarily.

"Jack, do you really think that's necessary?" Kate asked.

"Kate, do you have any ideas of where they might be?" Jack said more sharply than he intended. "I'm willing to entertain any ideas you've got, but right now I'm fresh out of ideas and I think we need to report them as missing."

Tears immediately filled Kate's eyes and Michelle put her arm around Kate's shoulders. "Jack's right, Kate. It's almost 6:15 and it's going to start getting dark soon. The police need to initiate a search."

Jack drew Kate into his arms and kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry I snapped at you. I'm as upset about this as you are, but we have to be realistic. We need to call the police. If the kids come waltzing through the door at some point, we can call off the search, but as of right now we have no idea where the kids are and we owe it to them to do everything possible to find them."

Kate knew Jack was right but at the same time, the thought that her children would be at the heart of a police search scared her to death. The police arrived within ten minutes of Jack's call and Kate watched as Jack and Michelle, now both in CTU mode, methodically detailed the events of the day. Descriptions of the children, complete with heights and weights and the clothes they were last seen wearing, were all provided. Kate finally felt useful when Jack asked her to find a recent picture of the four children. She ran numbly to the computer where she printed several pictures that had been taken a few weeks earlier at a Fourth of July picnic at her father's weekend getaway "cottage" on Puget Sound.

Soon the police were searching the neighborhood and the woods behind the house with dogs and helicopters. Michelle called Tony in San Francisco to tell him. He was understandably upset and promised her that he would be on the next flight back to Seattle. While he was waiting for his flight, he called CTU Los Angeles and asked to speak with Chloe.

"Chloe, I need a favor," Tony told her. "Two of my kids and Jack's two boys are missing in a wooded area behind Jack's house. I need you to redirect a satellite and monitor the infrared images of the area."

"Are you crazy, Tony?" Chloe asked in an incredulous voice. The line was so typically Chloe that Tony would have found it funny had the situation not been so serious. "I don't have the authority to redirect a satellite over that area. And, on top of that, even if I could get those images, infrared is going to light up like a Christmas tree with all of the wildlife out there. The satellite can't tell the difference between a person and a bear!"

That last word was the one Tony most wanted to ignore. Bears, bobcats and coyotes all lived in the area. They generally avoided humans, but if taken by surprise or if it felt threatened by the youngsters invading its territory, any of those animals would attack and could easily kill especially the smaller children.

"Come on, Chloe, it's worth a try. Talk to Hammond. He might be sympathetic and let you do it."

"Oh yeah, Tony, because he's one of your biggest fans. And as I recall, Jack isn't on his list of favorite people either."

"Look, Hammond and I aren't exactly friends, but he isn't such an ogre that he wants something bad to happen to my kids."

"Alright, Tony, I'll do it. But I'm telling you upfront that this is pointless. I'll call you back in about 20 minutes," Chloe said and she hung up.

Tony filled the 20 minutes by pacing and was grateful when his phone rang. "What have you got?" he asked without waiting for Chloe to say anything.

"Pretty much what I suspected, Tony," Chloe told him in a gentler tone than she had used before. "I've enhanced this four different ways. There're a lot of hot spots, but none that I can identify as your kids. I wish I could have been more help, Tony. I really do," Chloe said sympathetically. "If there is anything else CTU can do to help, Hammond said just to call. I'll be leaving soon, but he already authorized the next shift to help in any way they can. Good luck."

Tony thanked her and hung up. His flight wasn't leaving for another hour and he was afraid that he would pace a hole in his shoes by then.

"Rico, it's getting dark," Lucy said trying not to sound scared.

"No it isn't, Lucy. It's only 7 o'clock. It only seems dark because of all the trees. It won't be dark until around 8:30," Rico told her trying to sound upbeat.

"Yeah," Mason agreed, "that's plenty of time for us to get home." Mason and Rico exchanged glances. They were trying to reassure Ryan and Lucy but neither one of them felt as sure as they wanted to sound.

They walked for a while longer picking their way through a particularly dense stand of trees.

"Wait a minute," Ryan said as he stopped and looked at a strangely shaped tree. The trunk was straight for the first five or six feet and then took a sharp turn in an apparent attempt to find some sun between the other trees. "We passed this tree a little while ago. I remember it because it's crooked."

"There are lots of cooked trees," Mason told him.

"No, look at this. Right where the trunk bends there are some shelf mushrooms growing. It's the same tree. I know it is. We've been walking in a circle, Mason!"

Lucy's eyes filled with tears. "We're never going to get home! I'm scared, Rico," she said as she started to cry.

"Aw, come on, Lucy," Rico said. He wasn't sure what to do next but he had watched his father comfort little Carmen a million times. It seemed like she was always crying about something or other. He put his arms around Lucy like his father did to Carmen. "It's going to be alright. We'll find our way back."

Lucy crying was unnerving to the three boys. Lucy may have been a girl, but she didn't act like a girl and she never cried. If she felt a need to cry, maybe they really did have something to worry about.

"Let's keep walking," Rico suggested.

"No! I'm hungry and I'm tired of walking," Lucy cried. "I just want to be home with Mom and Daddy."

"Okay," he tried to reason with her. "You're right. It's late and we haven't eaten since lunch. Let's sit down and eat something. That will give us some time to figure out how to get back."

The children found a comfortable spot to sit down. They opened their backpacks and took stock of the food they had. They were suddenly happy that Loretta had packed such a big lunch. They had plenty for dinner and maybe, if they were careful, enough for breakfast tomorrow if it came to that.

"Do you think our parents are worried about us yet?" Ryan asked tentatively. Ryan both looked and acted like Kate. He was quiet and sensitive and mature for his age. In many ways more mature than his older brother who had his father's sense of adventure and impetuous streak. Ryan hated to think that he had caused his parents to worry.

"If I know Dad, he has the National Guard out searching by now," Mason said ruefully. "Man! We are going to be in so much trouble when we get home."

"I was thinking grounded for life," Rico said shaking his head.

"So what do we do next?" Lucy asked. She was feeling better now that she had eaten. "Do we just stay here and hope they find us or do we keep walking and hope we find them?"

The three boys all agreed that they didn't know the best course of action and all fell silent for a few minutes. Mason decided that as the oldest of the group, if only by a few months, he needed to be strong and provide guidance even if he wasn't feeling very strong right now.

"I think we have to face the possibility that we are going to spend the night out here. So maybe the best thing for us to do while it's still light is to find someplace comfortable to sleep. If we look we might even be able to find an old silver miner's shack. At least it would be some shelter."

"I think Mason's right," Rico agreed. "Let's do that. It's going to get dark soon and any search team that's looking for us is going to stop when it gets dark. Let's find a place to spend the night."

Ryan and Lucy looked less sure of themselves, but since they didn't have a better solution to offer, they went along with their older brothers. They all hauled their backpacks onto their backs and resumed their trek through the dense forest.

Just a few miles away, the Bauer's house had virtually been turned into a command post. Several police officers worked out of the house as they looked for clues and canvassed the neighborhood. Other Seattle police officers and agents of the natural resources police had already begun to search the woods. Teams of dogs were brought in but seemed to have lost the scent within a mile or two but they had followed it far enough to convince the searchers that the children had hiked into the woods. Teams divided the area into a grid and began their methodical search.

Kate's father, Bob Warner, and his wife Grace had arrived shortly after the police. Bob, who had been widowed back when Kate was in college, found Los Angeles a sad and lonely place once Kate and Jack moved to Seattle. Kate was his only living child since her younger sister Marie had been executed for her role in the terrorist plot to detonate a nuclear bomb in LA. So he decided to move the headquarters of Warner Enterprises to Seattle to be with his family. Bob had another motivation for moving to Seattle: Grace.

Grace was Kate's secretary who had become both a friend and a mother-figure to Kate soon after she moved to Seattle. Their mother-daughter type relationship was further solidified when, hours after Kate and Jack's wedding, Grace helped as Kate unexpectedly delivered her first son in a bedroom at Bob's house. Grace was the perfect name for this elegant woman. She had worked for Warner Enterprises in Seattle for many years, ever since her husband was killed in a car accident leaving her to raise three small sons alone. Bob met Grace at Kate and Jack's wedding and found himself falling in love with her almost instantly. The gentle manner with which she cared for Kate while she was in labor had further endeared her to him. They married a year later.

Bob had retired as CEO of Warner Enterprises when he turned seventy. Kate, who had been his right hand for years, replaced him at the helm of the company, making it one of the largest companies in the country run by a woman. Kate still depended on Bob for help at times, but more and more he and Grace preferred to enjoy their retirement by traveling and spending time with their grandchildren. On the weekends, Kate's family along with Grace's children and their families often went to Bob and Grace's "cottage" on Puget Sound. "Cottage" was a bit of an understatement. By most standards, it was a mansion with plenty of room for everyone. They had also become quite close to the Almeida family. Since Tony and Michelle didn't have any family in the area, they had virtually adopted the Almeida children as another set of grandchildren.

As the sun slowly set, Michelle stood on the back porch with Carmen scanning the tree line at the edge of the back yard hoping and praying that the children would casually walk out of the woods claiming to have lost track of time. She wished Tony was with her. He would be there soon and she held onto that thought. Carmen stayed close to her suddenly very afraid to allow any distance to come between herself and her mother lest she, too, become lost.

The back door closed behind her and she heard Jack's uneven gait on the wood floor of the porch. He put his hand on her shoulder. "You holding up okay?"

Michelle nodded. Her eyes filled with tears and she knew if she spoke she would begin to cry. The last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of Carmen. The child was upset enough without that.

Jack dropped down on one knee so he was eye level with Carmen. "Sweetie, Miss Loretta said she has a special treat for you. Why don't you go inside and see what she made you."

Loretta had gone home for the evening and was watching the evening news when the report about the missing children was aired. She was so upset that she returned to the Bauer's house to see if she could help. At the moment she was making coffee and feeding everyone in sight.

"It's okay, Carmen. See what Miss Loretta has for you and I'll stay right here on the porch."

"Promise you won't leave," Carmen begged, her thumb threatening to find its way into her mouth.

Michelle reached for Carmen's hand as her thumb got perilously close to her mouth. She lifted her daughter's hand up as she leaned over and kissed it. "I promise, Honey. I'll be right here when you get back." Jack and Michelle watched as Carmen went into the house. She looked back twice to make sure that Michelle was staying put.

"Are they calling off the search for tonight?" Michelle asked. She knew the answer to the question but she felt a need to ask it anyway.

Jack nodded the affirmative. "I spoke with the captain from the natural resources police. He said he was going to call his men back in at 8:30."

Michelle looked away and brushed tears from her face.

"They're going to be fine, Michelle. They have food and water. The sky is clear; it's going to be a pleasant night. Mason and Rico have been camping enough to know to pick out a sheltered spot. We'll find them in the morning."

Michelle knew that Jack was probably right. From what they could tell the kids just wandered off. It didn't appear that they were abducted or were in any way the victims of foul play. It was just a matter of finding them in the densely wooded forest. But as a mother, she couldn't help but worry. Were they cold or scared? Were any of them injured? One of them could have easily fallen and gotten hurt. She couldn't stand to think that any of them was in pain. What about wild animals? For a full grown male bear, any one of the children represented little more than a snack. And an injured child… Michelle couldn't even bear to think about that. That was an opportunity that a bobcat or coyote couldn't pass up. What about Lucy? For as much of a tomboy as she was, she hated spiders and snakes. A large spider web stretched between two trees in the back yard had kept her in the house for a full day earlier in the summer. She wouldn't even walk out the front door, let alone the back. She had never been camping with the boys and the truth was that she wasn't particularly suited to it. How would she ever make it through a night in the woods? Michelle tried in vain to push the thoughts to the back of her mind as Carmen returned to the porch carefully carrying a bowl containing the brownie fudge sundae that Loretta had made for her.

Darkness was just settling over the region when the four children found a nice place to spend the night. It was a small grassy area surrounded by trees. It allowed them to see the moon and the stars. It wasn't much light, but enough to make them all feel better. They each spread out the beach towel that they were carrying in their backpacks from when they played in the stream earlier in the day. Then each of them lay down with their head pillowed on their backpack. It wasn't exactly as comfortable as their beds, but they were all very tired and it would work for now. Lucy and Ryan were exhausted and fell asleep in minutes. Mason and Rico lay awake looking at the stars.

"Ric, what do we do tomorrow morning? I mean, like Lucy said before, should we stay here and hope they find us or should we keep trying to find the way home?"

Rico shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I wish I had an answer. Let's try and get some sleep. Maybe we'll be able to figure it out better after we get some sleep."

"How much food do we have left?"

"Between us there's enough left for breakfast."

"Any water?"

"No, we've got some juice, but the water's gone. We kept the bottles so we can fill them up the next time we find a spring or a stream. We'll be okay for a while."

Mason nodded his silent agreement. Like his father he internalized many of his feelings. Rico sounded so sure of himself, while Mason was full of lingering doubts. He wondered if Rico was as confident as he sounded or if, deep down, Rico was as scared as he.


	3. Chapter 3

_Hi everyone and thanks again to those of you who reviewed. _

_Special thanks to MBooker for going back and reading Carnival Town and sending me such nice reviews. I love knowing that people are still reading my old stuff and I LOVE getting reviews! _

_So on to Chapter 3 and the plot begins to thicken…_

Chapter 3

The air was cool and the sun was just peeking through the trees and into the clearing where the Almeida and Bauer children had slept almost as peacefully as if they were in their own beds. Mason had begun to stir. He stretched and started to roll over when a rustling sound in the brush jolted him awake.

The excitement of being rescued and going home to one of Loretta's hot breakfasts was overwhelming. Even the knowledge that he was going to be subjected to an angry lecture first from his father and then likely again from Uncle Tony didn't upset him.

"We're over here! Over here!" he called as he jumped to his feet and waved his arms above his head. He turned toward the sound expecting to see a smiling rescue crew grateful that they could report a successful completion to the mission and happy that they no longer had to tramp through these godforsaken woods.

The noise Mason made woke Rico and he had just started to sit up when he saw Mason drop to the ground almost on top of him and clamp a hand over his mouth. Stunned, he looked at his best friend whose blue eyes were huge with fear. Rico turned his head to look in the same direction as Mason and had to swallow hard to contain his own urge to scream. Less than a hundred feet away, a large female brown bear was making her way through the brush with her cub. They were probably looking for something to eat and had stopped at a bush to pull some sort of berry off of it. The cub ate the berries contentedly, but the mother looked nervously toward the children. She growled a long, low growl of warning and sat up on her hind legs.

Mason took his had away from Rico's mouth. "If we leave quietly maybe she'll leave us alone," he whispered.

Rico agreed. He had no intention of sitting still while the bear considered which of them to eat first. The two boys grabbed the towels they had been lying on and threw them over their shoulders. Then they shouldered backpacks and moved silently to wake up their siblings.

Rico knelt next to Lucy and shook her gently. "Lucy, wake up," he whispered. "Don't make any noise," he said as she opened her eyes. "Just get up slowly and grab your things. We got to get out of here."

Mason woke Ryan in much the same way and soon the four were stalking stealthily away from the bear. For her part, the bear took a few steps forward and growled a little louder. The cub was now interested and took several steps toward them and imitated his mother's growl. If they hadn't been so scared, it would have been cute.

The children continued on taking care to look back occasionally and make sure the bear wasn't following them. They eventually put enough distance between themselves and the bear that they allowed themselves to relax.

"Do you think she'll try and follow us?" Lucy asked. "It wouldn't be very hard for her to follow our scent."

"I think if she was interested in us she would have come after us right away. She was probably more concerned about her cub. Once she knew we weren't threatening him I don't think she was that interested in us," Rico said with some confidence. He loved animals and was particularly interested in bears. He read a great deal about them and thought that he understood their behavior pretty well. He was smart enough to know that he might be deluding himself but at the moment preferred to think that he knew what he was talking about.

They pressed on for about another hour before Mason suggested that they sit down and eat. They finished what was left of the hard boiled eggs and the trail mix and shared the two remaining bottles of juice. They ate silently all of them old enough to understand that at this point they had no more food and only empty water and juice bottles. Springs and streams dotted the area, so there was a good chance that they could refill the bottles with water but food was another issue entirely. Other than some wild berries, there wasn't much to eat out here. If they weren't rescued soon they were going to get awfully hungry.

Once again Jack and Kate's home had become a beehive of activity. Tony had arrived around midnight and although Carmen slept most of the night in his arms, none of the adults got more than a brief nap while reclining on chairs and sofas in the family room. Jack and Tony both became extremely restless as soon as the sun rose. They wanted the police to resume the search as soon as possible and were upset when the officers hadn't arrived at the crack of dawn. They relaxed a bit as the officers began arriving around 7 o'clock. Loretta was bustling around making coffee and cookies for the search teams as they paired off and headed toward their section of the grid.

Jack approached the commanding officer, a state police lieutenant named Wes Grimes. Wes knew Jack and Tony from a security upgrade that they put into place at the Seattle airport. Grimes division also headed up the local security for the airport facility.

"Wes," Jack started. "Tony and I want to help. We can go out with one of the teams and cover twice as much ground."

Wes looked at Jack and shook his head. "Jack, you know the drill. This is a state police operation. We've got the cooperation of the local police and the natural resources police so we have plenty of manpower. I can't have civilians tramping around out there. It becomes a liability for my men."

"Give me a break, Wes," Jack said coldly. "Tony and I are hardly untrained civilians. We were in this business for years. How can you consider us a liability?"

"It's been a long time since you were in this line of work, Jack. Things have changed. Some of our techniques have changed."

"Which is why I want you to send us out with your officers. We'll follow their lead. We won't be in the way," Jack told him. "They're our kids, Wes and we want to be part of the search."

"We're wasting time here. I don't know how to say this any nicer Jack, so I'm just going to say it," Wes looked down at Jack's leg. "You are not in any shape to go traipsing through the woods. You're a liability and you're going to slow my men down."

Jack was livid. "I walk in these woods with my boys all the time, Wes. Yes, I use a cane on uneven terrain, but I'm in better shape than a lot of your guys. If I fall behind, so be it. I can take care of myself. I'm not asking for them to help me. I'm telling you that I can help them."

Tony stepped in at this point. "Look Wes, you said it before. We're wasting time here. Jack's right. We're capable of helping. If Jack falls behind, I'll stay with him and your men can go ahead. You've got kids, Wes. Put yourself in our shoes. It's driving us crazy just hanging around here."

Wes sighed. "Alright, you win. Go with Winchester and Finney. They have the southwest section of the grid. It covers the most ground, but the terrain is easier to manage. There's extra gear in the truck."

Jack and Tony each grabbed a backpack and made their way to the back porch where Nick Winchester and Chris Finney were waiting. Neither of them was particularly happy that they were being forced to take the fathers of the missing children with them, but Lt. Grimes had given them no choice.

"They both know too many people in high places," Grimes told the men. "Bauer will be on the phone to the superintendent of the state police or worse yet, his father-in-law, Bob Warner, is a personal friend of the governor. Warner will be on the phone with the governor in a hot second. Either way, I'm going to be told to let them go along. So I might as well do it without getting my ass kicked by one of my superiors." Finney and Winchester agreed grudgingly but decided quickly that at the first sign that Jack couldn't keep up, they would dump the two of them.

Jack and Tony said tender goodbyes to their wives and to Carmen. Both hated to leave them behind but wanted desperately to participate in the search for their children.

"Jack," Kate said with tears in her eyes. "Do you really think it's best for you to be involved in the search? Why don't you just stay here? I need you here."

"Sweetheart, those kids were my responsibility. It's my fault that they're missing. I was supposed to be watching them. I need to be a part of the search and rescue." He dropped his eyes. "I will never be able to forgive myself if anything bad happens to them."

Kate hugged and kissed him not sure if she quite understood how he felt but knowing that there was no point in arguing.

Tony said goodbye to Michelle, who was actually happy that he was part of the search team. It made her feel better to know that he would be out there lending his expertise to the operation. Carmen, on the other hand, couldn't stop crying when she found out that her beloved Daddy was going out into the woods to try and find her brother and sister.

"Rico and Lucy are already lost," she wailed, "now Daddy will be lost, too."

Tony held her and tried to comfort her. He explained that he had communication equipment and that they would never be out of range of the police but it didn't help. Carmen's little body shook with sobs as she pressed her face into the crook of her father's neck. She was breaking his heart. Tony loved his children equally, but something about Carmen made his relationship with her different than with his older two children. Rico and Lucy were cut from a different mold than Carmen. Tony tried to tell himself that it was just that they were older, but knew that wasn't the whole reason. Carmen had a naïveté that neither Rico nor Lucy ever had. They were both more like he and Michelle. They viewed the world with a critical and somewhat cynical eye even at their young ages just as he always had. They both had a quick wit and it Lucy's case, that wit could be biting. Carmen's world was one of beauty and love. Tony wished that he could view the world through Carmen's eyes sometimes, but by the same token, worried that when she was forced to learn some of the world's cold, cruel lessons that it would destroy her beautiful spirit. He prayed that the day for learning such lessons hadn't already arrived.

As Carmen cried in his arms, Tony could feel tears fill his own eyes. He knew when he saw Michelle turn away that she was crying now, too. He waited until Michelle was able to compose herself and turn back before putting Carmen into her arms and giving them both one last kiss.

Carmen wriggled out of Michelle's arms and ran across the room to the open door to watch Tony leave. She stood staring out of the door for a long time with tears streaming down her face and her thumb now planted solidly in her mouth.

Kate and Michelle stood behind her each with a hand on one of her shoulders. Frankie, the Border Collie, seemed to understand that something was going on. He left his post in front of the fireplace to come to the door and watch, too. They all watched in silence as Jack and Tony met with the officers and started off. Neither Kate nor Michelle said a word, but both were concerned with Jack's ability to keep up.

"I'm glad Tony will be with Jack," Kate said after a long moment of silence.

Bob Warner walked up behind his daughter and put his arm around her. "They'll be fine, Kate. With Jack's determination there's probably nothing he can't do if he puts his mind to it."

Kate nodded wanting to believe her father but worried none the less.

The day wore on and the sun got higher in the sky. The children found a clear steam and sat down to take long drinks of water and fill their empty bottles to the top. Without realizing it they continued to wander deeper into the woods and farther away from the search teams. They considered staying in one place for a while, but they were all getting hungry and were hoping to find some blueberry or blackberry bushes. It wasn't much, but it was something to stomachs that were used to eating on a regular basis.

It was almost 5 o'clock when the four children stopped again to drink from a stream. They had been unsuccessful in their quest for food and all four were starting to worry about having to spend another night in the woods. Their run in with the bear and her cub that morning had bothered them more than they were willing to admit. They were sitting next to the stream when Lucy tipped back her head and sniffed the air.

"Do you smell that?" she asked.

"Smell what?" Rico asked in reply.

"Food. I smell food cooking. Like hot dogs over a fire."

"You're dreaming, Lucy," Rico scoffed. "You're just so hungry that you're imagining it."

"No," Mason said. "I think she's right. I smell it too. When the breeze blows this way," he pointed east, "I can smell it. Somebody must be camping nearby. Maybe they have a radio and we can call the police and give them our location."

All four children were standing now and sniffing the air frantically. They followed the smell walking slowly in an east bound direction. The aroma of food and a cooking fire became stronger and stronger as they walked a couple hundred yards.

"Hello," Mason called. "Hello, can anyone hear me? Hello."

There was no answer but seconds later the children stepped into a clearing where someone had clearly made camp. Two large tents were pitched and a fire was burning unattended inside a circle of rocks. Disposable plates and several beer bottles sat a few feet away from the fire.

Mason was just about to shout again when a woman stepped into the clearing from the tree line a few feet away. The woman gasped, clearly startled to see anyone here. She was a thin woman, so thin as to look ill, with stringy ash blond hair and pale skin. She looked worn and tired and maybe older than she really was.

"I'm sorry we scared you, ma'am," Rico said.

"It's okay. I'm fine," the woman said as she tried to relax and force her breathing to return to normal. "I just didn't expect anyone to be out here, that's all. What're you kids doin' here?" She had a deep southern accent. "Are ya campin' near by?"

"We were playing and we got lost," Lucy said. "We've been out here in the woods since yesterday. Do you have a radio so we can call the police?"

"Sorry, we don't have a radio. When we go campin' we kinda like ta git away from it all, ya know," the woman laughed nervously. She looked around as if she expected something to happen. "You kids better git outta here. My husband's gonna be back soon and he ain't gonna like it if he finds ya'll hangin' aroun'."

"Ma'am, we don't want to cause any problems, but we've been out here in the woods since yesterday. We're tired and really hungry. If you could just help us find our way out so we could get in touch with our parents, we would really appreciate it. Our parents are probably really worried by now. Can't you please help us?" Rico told her hoping that she would be sympathetic to their plight.

"Ya been gone since yesterday?"

All four of them were nodding. "Yes, ma'am," Mason said politely. He was sure that Rico had hit a nerve with his pleas and that the woman was going to help them.

"Ya think you're folks have got the law out lookin' for ya?" she asked anxiously.

Rico and Mason smiled knowingly at each other. "Our dads probably have the police, the FBI and the army looking for us," Mason said. "They used to be federal agents. They probably have helicopters and satellites tracking us down."

"And when they find us we're gonna be grounded for life," Ryan added morosely.

"Look, I'm sorry I can't help ya, but ya gotta git outta here. My Vernon's gonna be real mad if he finds ya here." The woman had clearly gotten more nervous. "Go! Ya gotta go," she said as she put her hand on Mason's shoulder and started to turn him around and direct him out of the clearing.

"Ma'am, please, we really need help," Lucy begged as she started to cry.

The woman didn't have time to answer when a loud voice called from past the tree line. "Woman, who're ya talkin' to?"

The woman became anxious and her lip started to tremble. "It's nobody, Vernon."

"Only a damn fool talks to theirself. I didn't know I was married to a fool, Peggy." the voice was closer now.

"Get outta here! Do ya hear me? Go an' don't look back!" she whispered urgently to the children.

"Who the hell're they?" An overweight man in a stained tee shirt and well worn jeans came into the clearing. He, too, had long, unkempt hair and his face was covered by a bushy beard. He smelled of beer and his swaying gait made it clear to even the children that he was drunk.

"They're just some kids, Vernon. Leave 'em be."

All four of the children involuntarily took a step backward. The man was big and frightening and contrasted sharply with the small meek woman who stood before them. He also was drastically different than the children's fathers who, despite their strong personalities, were really quite mild and gentle particularly with their wives and children.

"How the hell did you kids get here?" he demanded.

Rico found his voice first. "We're lost, sir. We were playing in the woods behind their house," he pointed at Mason and Ryan, "and before we knew it we couldn't figure out how to get back."

"What's your name, boy?" he said as he looked Rico up and down.

"Rico," he said quietly now clearly frightened by the man.

"Rico! What kinda candy ass name is that?" the man roared.

"Vernon, leave him alone," the small woman pleaded.

"It's a nickname, sir. It's short for Ricardo."

"Ricardo. What's you last name, _Ricardo_?" the man said each syllable slowly for emphasis.

"Almeida," Rico told him.

"That you're sister?" the man asked pointing at Lucy.

Rico nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Where you from, boy?" the man asked.

"I live in Seattle, sir," Rico answered politely.

"I mean, where was you two born, boy?" Vernon asked impatiently. "Are ya'll in this country legally?"

"We were born in Seattle," Rico said. At some point he stopped being afraid and started to get angry. He understood now why he was being interrogated by the man; it was because of his Hispanic heritage. He had never personally experienced any racial prejudice before but his father talked about other kids making fun of him when he was little because of his parents' accents. Rico decided to defend himself. "My father was born in Chicago and my mother was born in LA. We're American, just like you."

"Goddamned smart-mouth spic!" Vernon spat as he moved toward Rico.

Rico instinctively ducked as the man lunged for him. The woman screamed and grabbed Vernon's arm. "Stop! Vernon, no! He's just a kid. Leave him alone," she begged. Vernon's attention and anger quickly turned from Rico to the woman.

"Run!" she screamed at the children. "Run!"

They knew they should run and they all wanted to but they couldn't manage it. All four stood transfixed as Vernon began to beat the woman.

"Don't you never touch me like that, you bitch!" he bellowed as he reared back and slapped one of his big bear paw-like hands across her face.

The woman fell backward and started to cry. A large welt was already raised on her cheek. "Vernon, stop! Stop!" she begged. "I'm sorry! I'll never do it again. I swear. Please don't hit me." She curled into a fetal position to protect her face and vital organs all the while begging the man to stop but he continued to kick her.

"Vernon, what are you doing? That's enough! Stop it now!" came yet another voice from the other side of the clearing.

The voice belonged to a medium sized man dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. The children didn't know who he was, but they noticed that Vernon stopped immediately when the man told him to. He dropped his head like a contrite child and stepped away from the woman who lay curled up and crying on the ground.

This new man appeared to be a few years older than Vernon and for whatever reason, Vernon seemed to be afraid of him. "I had to do it, Roger. Peggy was interferin'. I was just tryin' to teach this smart ass little wetback some respect for his elders an' she tried to stop me."

Roger was down on the ground checking out Peggy's injuries. She had stopped crying but remained on the ground whimpering. Roger helped her up and instructed her to get some ice to put on her face. She nodded saying nothing and limped slowly away before disappearing into one of the tents.

Roger turned his attention to the children. "Lost, I presume," he stated matter of factly. He didn't have the southern accent that the other two adults had.

The children merely nodded and stood rooted in their positions. All were too afraid to speak.

"It's okay. You can talk. Don't let Vernon scare you. He gets a little out of control sometimes but he'll listen to me. I won't let him hurt you. And Peggy will be fine. She'll have a few bruises, nothing that won't heal in a few days. How did you get lost?" Roger asked. He seemed genuinely nice. At least he wasn't as frightening as Vernon. His speech and manners were far more refined.

"We were playing near my house," Mason said, "and we got too far into the woods and couldn't find our way back. Can you help us get out? We just want to get to where we can call the police."

"Of course we can help you, but we can't do it tonight. It will get dark before we can hike out and get you to the proper authorities. In the meantime, you can stay with us. There's a little place not too far from here where somebody else who was camping built kind of a lean-to shelter. I'll have Peggy take you there with some extra blankets. That will be a good place for you to spend the night. In the morning we'll take you out to the nearest road and find someone who can help you."

The four children felt relieved but Ryan suddenly remembered how hungry he was. "Do you have any extra food? It's been a long time since we've eaten."

Roger frowned. "We really only brought enough food for ourselves but I'll see what I can scrounge up." Roger turned and went into the same tent that Peggy had retreated into earlier. The children stood silently watching Vernon and hoping that he didn't "get out of control" again, as Roger had described it.

Peggy stood in the tent gently dabbing a wet rag against the side of her rapidly swelling face. The rustling caused by Roger entering the tent startled her and she gasped and protectively covered her head.

"Oh, stop it, Peggy. I won't hurt you," Roger said in a voice that was less empathetic than it had been minutes ago. "We can't have those kids hanging around. Get some blankets and take them to that lean-to we saw about 100 yards to the west. They can sleep there for the night."

"What happens then?" Peggy asked.

"While they're sleeping, we'll have to move camp so they can't find us in the morning."

"Can I at least give them some food?"

"No, we don't have any extra."

"Sure we do, Roger. We only need enough food to get us through Sunday. After the bombing we need to get out."

"And go where, Peggy? To the Holiday Inn? I don't think so. We're going to be on the run for weeks. We'll be sleeping in tents and hiking. I don't know when we're going to find a grocery store to resupply. I'm not going to starve just to fill the bellies of some rich brats from Seattle. The houses that border this section of woods are million dollar houses. Let them go without food for a couple of days. We have more important things to worry about. This whole operation depends on us."

Peggy nodded and said nothing. She gathered up blankets and went to get the children. Roger watched her go and shook his head. Peggy was a weak link. He only brought her along because that stupid oaf Vernon had told her of their plans before they left and Roger was afraid that if he left Peggy behind, she might go to the authorities and spill the beans. He pushed his way through the tent flap and into the clearing where he doused their cooking fire with a bucket of water. He couldn't take the chance of the fire attracting any more attention.

"Hey, why'd ya do that? I ain't done eatin'. I was gonna cook another coupla hot dogs," Vernon complained.

"Shut up, Vernon. We've got a bigger problem here than your stomach. Those kids can identify us."

"What're we gonna do about it?" Vernon asked through a mouth full of food.

Roger looked over his shoulder to make sure that Peggy and the kids were well out of earshot. Then he turned cold eyes back to Vernon and spoke coolly and deliberately. "We're going to wait until they're asleep and then we're going to kill them."

_Thanks for reading, please, please, please review! I really need the feedback and the encouragement._


	4. Chapter 4

_Thanks again for all of the great reviews. Thanks, too, to those of you who went back and read some of my old stuff and took the time to review!_

Chapter 4

Kate stood in the den staring at a picture on Jack's desk. It was a picture of she and Jack sitting on a hospital bed just a few hours after Ryan was born. She was holding their newborn son and Jack was holding two-year-old Mason. The smile on her face belied her exhaustion after twelve hours of laboring with a nine pound baby. Neither Mason nor Jack was looking at the camera, but were focused on the new baby. Ryan was amazingly alert for being only a couple of hours old. His blue eyes shone even then. She loved that picture. It captured the happiness of a moment like few others she had ever seen. It stood in such stark contrast to the moment she was living now. A moment in which she didn't think she had ever felt so utterly helpless or alone and that was saying something. She had felt pretty helpless and alone when her mother died and again when she was hit by the reality that her sister was working for a terrorist group and yet again the day Jack was shot. Then, of course, there was the day two months after her bitter break up with Jack that she realized she was carrying his child and he was on an undercover mission God-knows-where. When she thought back, that day had been by far the worst. She felt that she had no control over those other events. But getting pregnant while her relationship with Jack was about to collapse was her fault. She had no one to blame but herself and Jack and he was no where to be found.

But today… Today was worse. Much worse. Today her sons, whom she loved more than she had ever thought it possible to love another human being, were missing. No one had ever warned her how strong a mother's love could be or how broken that same mother's heart was when the child was gone. _They weren't gone!_ She admonished herself for thinking it. _They're lost. Jack will find them._ She repeated it like a mantra in her mind.

That didn't make her feel any more helpful. Jack and Tony were out searching and Michelle was helping the local authorities coordinate the search. She sat at the dining room table, which was now strewn with laptops and maps and search grids, and helped plot the movements of the search teams. On top of that, Michelle had Carmen who needed her. Grace and Loretta were buzzing around taking care of everyone. Her father was dealing with the media. News reporters littered the yard. This was a big story. _The sons of Warner Enterprise's CEO are missing…See the latest developments on the 11 o'clock news._

Thank God her father was dealing with those crazy reporters. But that meant everyone had a role except Kate who wandered aimlessly through the house wondering if her children would ever come home. W_hat if they didn't? How would she go on? How would Jack react? Was their marriage strong enough to survive that kind of tragedy? Why had she been so against having more children when Jack wanted to try for a daughter? She could be like Michelle right now. Michelle had Carmen. Even if she had had another boy, she would have had someone to hold onto right now, like Michelle did._ It was all pointless speculation. She had no way of knowing what would happen next nor did she have any control over it. All she could do was wait and pray and cry her heart out and she had been doing all of that for the last 24 hours already.

Peggy walked with the four children through the woods toward the lean-to shelter that she and Vernon and Roger had noticed several days earlier when they first set up camp nearby. She had been nice to the children and they had begun to trust her. They also felt badly that she had been beaten by Vernon while trying to defend Rico and wondered how their fathers would have reacted had they been there to witness it.

"There it is, up ahead," Peggy told her young charges as she pointed toward a crude shelter. "It ain't much but for tonight it'll be home. Guess it's not the kinda home you kids is used to, is it."

"It's just a little after six o'clock, ma'am," Mason noted. "It won't be dark for a couple of hours. If you would help us, we could get a good start on getting out to the main road where we could get some help. We just want to get home."

"Look, ya'll seem like real nice kids to me and I'd like ta help ya, I really would. But ya'll seen what I'm up against. I can't fight Vernon or Roger neither. Roger tol' me ta bring ya to the lean-to and I done it. I got some blankets for ya. Now get some rest and we'll get ya back home in the mornin'." Peggy felt bad for lying to the children. According to Roger, she and Vernon and Roger would be no where to be found by tomorrow morning. Besides, tomorrow was Saturday and they had to be in Seattle late Saturday afternoon to complete their mission. They couldn't play nursemaid to lost kids.

Peggy started to walk away and Lucy and Ryan both started crying. They were scared and tired and desperately hungry and the only person who had shown them any compassion was leaving them. Mason and Rico wanted to cry, too but as the self-appointed leaders of the group, they did their best to suppress their emotions.

"Now don't start doin' that," Peggy said in an exasperated voice. "What're ya'll cryin' for. I done tol' ya we'll git ya some help in the mornin'."

"Ma'am," Rico said as politely as he could. "We're just really hungry and scared and we know our parents are worried to death. We want to go home. Please don't yell at them for crying."

Peggy's expression softened and she looked down. "I know you're scared. Sometimes I git scared, too." She paused for a moment. "Maybe I can git ya some food and at least ya won't be hungry no more. That's the best I can do. Gimme some time. I have to do it when Roger and Vernon ain't looking or else… Well never mind. I'll be back soon as I can."

Jack checked his watch for the thousandth time. "Damn it! It's 6:30 and we're no closer to finding the kids than we were this morning." He was exhausted but refused to let it show.

"Come on, Jack," Tony said knowing his friend and business partner almost as well as he knew himself. "Let's take a break." Tony sat down on a large rock and opened his backpack to get water.

Jack did the same and took out a two way radio. "Base, this is Bauer," Jack said into the radio. "Do you copy?"

"We copy, Jack," came the reply from Wes Grimes.

"Have you heard anything from any of the teams? Have they found any evidence of the kids?"

"Negative, Jack."

"Are the chopper pilots seeing anything from the air?"

"No, the tree cover is too dense in most sections for them to get a good look. It's going to be dark in about 2 hours. At that point I'm going to have everyone make camp for the night. We'll start again with first light. If you and Tony want to come back to be with your wives tonight, I can have a chopper pick you up in the closest clearing."

Jack looked at Tony who shook his head declining the offer. "Negative. We'll stay out here tonight. We get an earlier start in the morning that way."

Jack didn't want to think about darkness or having to spend another sleepless night without his children. Nor did he want to think about what Kate was going through back at the house. The last time he was this scared, Kim was being held by the Drazens. He knew that in this case, it was most likely that the children had just wandered off and gotten themselves lost as opposed to all those years ago when he knew that his baby was being held by people who would happily kill her. But still, he worried. What if they were wrong? He and Tony and Michelle had all made plenty of enemies in their previous jobs. What if one of them was here now and had abducted their children?

"Jack," Tony said as if reading his mind. "If someone had the kids, they would have made some attempt to contact us by now. If they put time into tracking us down and finding a way to take our kids, they would want us to know who they were and that they were exacting revenge for whatever wrongs they felt we had done to them."

"I know," Jack said without looking up. "I still can't help but worry. I thought we would have found them by now. Kate and Michelle must be going crazy at home."

"At least Michelle has Carmen. I'm more worried about Kate," Tony said.

"Bob and Grace are there with her." Jack said. "They'll take care of her. I'm grateful she has them."

They each drained a water bottle without saying anything more. Revitalized, Jack looked again at his watch and then at the sky. "Come on," Jack said as he stood up with the help of his cane. "We can still cover a lot of ground before dark."

The Bauer and Almeida children sat dejectedly on the ground near the lean-to. Lucy and Ryan were no longer crying but none of the children was particularly cheery at the moment. They were all hoping that Peggy would come back with food soon and that the sun would set so they could sleep. The sooner night came, the sooner morning would get here and they could head home.

The four waited and waited for their food to arrive. The sun went down and plunged the woods into a deep darkness. The clearing they slept in the night before allowed them to see the moon and the starts. Tonight they were in a dense section of forest and unable to get much light from the celestial bodies.

"I really thought she would come back with food," Lucy said softly, her voice trembling. "I really believed her."

"I think she tried, Lucy," Ryan assured her. "I don't think she could get away from the two men. If they caught her Vernon was going to beat her up again."

"Let's try and forget that we're hungry and get some sleep," Rico suggested.

They spread out the blankets that Peggy had given them and bunched up their beach towels to make pillows. They had just stretched out on their makeshift beds when Ryan saw a weak beam of light coming through the woods.

"Hey, look!" he exclaimed as he jumped up and ran toward the flashlight beam. "I knew you would come back."

Sure enough Peggy was making her way through the darkness with a bag in her hand. Ryan grabbed her arm and pulled her back to the lean-to.

"See! I told you she'd come back," Ryan said with his faith in human nature now restored.

"It ain't much," Peggy told them. "I got some peanut butter sandwiches and some cookies. That oughta hold ya til mornin'. Oh, and I brung ya a flashlight. I thought ya might like that. It gets awful dark with all these trees."

The children devoured the sandwiches and thanked Peggy profusely. Ryan rewarded her with a hug and a small kiss on the cheek. She said good night to them and was barely able to control her emotions. She hated that Roger was going to strand the kids out here but she knew better than to argue with him. He stopped Vernon from beating her earlier, but she knew that he had no qualms about having Vernon beat her if she gave him a hard time.

The children settled in and tried to sleep. Ryan stared up into the darkness feeling particularly lonely. "I like that lady," he said. "She reminds me of Mom."

"What?" Mason exclaimed incredulously as he sat up. "Our Mom? Ry, are we talking about the same person? Our Mom, the woman who speaks perfect English and has never been that dirty in her entire life. Are you out of your mind? They have nothing in common."

"I didn't say she looked or talked like Mom, Mason. I just think she's nice like Mom," Ryan clarified his statement.

"She is a nice lady," Lucy agreed nodding. "She needs to get away from that awful man. Maybe Daddy would know how to help her. What do you think, Rico? Maybe when they take us to find the police we can tell the police how that man hit her."

"Maybe we can," Rico said, "but for now, let's just concentrate on getting some sleep and getting home tomorrow."

They all lay back and tried sleeping one more time. Rico and Mason and Lucy fell asleep pretty quickly. Ryan, on the other hand, lay awake worrying about Peggy. What if Vernon figured out that she brought food to them? He would beat her up again. The more he thought about it, the more worried he became. He finally decided that he had to go back to the campsite and make sure Peggy was okay. He found the flashlight that Peggy brought them lying between Rico and Mason. Then he crept quietly away so as not to wake the others.

Jack and Tony sat on the ground next to Chris and Nick, the officers they had been assigned to for the search. All of the teams had been told to make camp when it became dark. Now they were sitting in silence eating military style MREs and reviewing the events of the day in their heads.

The silence was broken when the two-way radio crackled to life. It was Wes Grimes calling the teams from his makeshift command center at the Bauer house to conference together over the radio. They reviewed and updated the search grids and discussed their strategy for continuing the search the next morning.

Carmen was sitting half asleep on Michelle's lap during the conference call when Tony's voice came through the radio. The little girl jumped to the floor suddenly awake and alert.

"Daddy! Daddy!" she cried as she grabbed the microphone from Grimes' hand. "That's my Daddy! Daddy, are you alright?"

Despite his exhaustion and his grim mood at the moment, Tony broke into a broad grin when he heard Carmen's sweet voice. "I'm fine, Sweet Pea. Are you okay?"

"I miss you, Daddy. When are you coming home?"

"I'll be home just as soon as we find your brother and sister and Mason and Ryan, Honey," he told her. "You've got to hold on a little longer, Carmen. I'm going to get back to you and Mommy just as soon as I can. I want to make sure that I bring Lucy and Rico with me."

"Okay, Daddy. If you say so," Carmen answered reluctantly. "Come home soon."

"As soon as I can, Honey," Tony said trying to get his emotions in check. "Hey, I think it's bedtime. Why don't you get some sleep. Mommy will give you an extra goodnight kiss for me. Okay?"

"Okay, Daddy. I love you."

Tony bit his lower lip trying again to keep his emotions from spilling over into his voice. "I love you, too, Sweetheart. I'll see you soon."

The poignant exchange between father and daughter had been heard by all of the search teams. Some of the men felt a little guilty that they had been a part of what should have been a private moment. But for all of the searchers, it was a much-needed reminder of why they were all camped out in the woods that night. In their exhaustion, many of them were beginning to wonder if finding four lost kids was worth all of this effort. Listening to Tony talk to Carmen and remembering their own families at home renewed their sense of urgency to find the children.

After the conference with the search teams, Michelle picked up Carmen and carried her to the Bauer's guest room. Loretta had turned down the bed and Carmen slipped easily under the covers as soon as Michelle set her down.

"Did you like talking to Daddy over the radio?" Michelle asked her daughter.

"No," Carmen answered without hesitation.

"No?" Michelle asked incredulously. "Why not?"

"I want Daddy to be here. I don't want to talk to him over the radio." Carmen retorted.

"Honey," Michelle said gently as she sat down next to Carmen on the bed. "Daddy is out finding Rico and Lucy. He'll be home as soon as they're safe. If you were lost, wouldn't you want Daddy to come and find you?"

"I'll never get lost," Carmen informed her mother.

"Oh, you won't?"

"No, I won't go that far away from you. I can't get lost if I just stay close to you," Carmen said innocently.

Michelle smiled. It was all so simple to Carmen. She liked the way Carmen's mind worked and wished hers worked the same way sometimes, but years of CTU and nuclear warheads and deadly viruses had changed her way of thinking. Carmen reminded her of simpler times with no worries. She kissed her daughter once for Tony and once for herself and sat on the edge of the bed while the pretty little girl drifted off to sleep. Michelle's heart ached as she sat watching Carmen sleep. She was worried about Lucy and Rico and she missed Tony. She was tired of putting up a strong front for Carmen's sake. She envied Kate at the moment. Kate could break down any time she wanted. No one was counting on her to be strong and, although Jack wasn't there, Kate's father was a wonderful source of support. Michelle wanted nothing more than to break down in Tony's arms. It always amazed her that she could derive so much strength from Tony. He didn't have to do or say anything; just having him near was enough to get her through every rough situation they had ever faced.

When Peggy left the children, she made her way back to the campsite in a roundabout manner. She had gotten away from Vernon and Roger by saying that she was going to a nearby stream to wash up. She needed to detour to the stream and at least wet her hair and make it look as if she had washed. She decided not to hurry back. Since Roger had decided that they would move their campsite, that meant that he and Vernon would be busy packing up. She was in no mood to pack all of their equipment. So the longer it took for her to get back, the less she would have to help.

Vernon and Roger sat on the ground outside one of their tents huddled near a battery operated lamp. They had a map spread out between them. Ryan caught site of the lamp when he was still a few yards away so he extinguished his flashlight to help preserve the battery. He looked around for Peggy but didn't see her; he crouched low behind some branches to wait for Peggy.

"Where's Peggy?" Roger asked.

"I dunno," Vernon answered. "She went down the stream to wash up and she ain't come back yet."

"That was ages ago. How long can it take her to wash up?"

"Considerin' how filthy she was, it might take her pretty damn long," Vernon laughed uproariously obviously proud of himself that he had come up with what he considered a hilarious joke.

Roger clearly didn't find the joke funny and Vernon seemed hurt when Roger didn't laugh. "Well she better get her ass back here soon. We need to review the plan and I only intend to go over it once," Roger said.

At about the same time, Peggy emerged from the tree line at the opposite side of the camp from where Ryan was hiding. She walked casually toward Vernon and Roger. She looked around the campsite and was disappointed to see that nothing had been packed. It figured the two men were waiting for her to do all the work.

Roger looked up from the map. "Oh, there you are. I thought you abandoned us."

"Not hardly. How the hell would I git back to civilization? Whether I like it or not, I'm in this thing for the long haul. I'm only here to make sure you don't try cheatin' Vernon here outta our share of the money. You're payin' us $50,000 and not a penny less. I ain't sleepin' out here on this cold ass ground 'cause I think it's fun, ya know."

"Nobody's trying to cheat you out of anything. You do your job; you get your money. Then you can go back to Arkansas or Tennessee or Alabama or wherever the hell you're from. Fifty thousand dollars in those back woods you live in ought to make you rich. Now, sit down! We need to review the plan."

Ryan stayed huddled behind the brush while listening to the conversation. Peggy sat down and Roger continued talking.

"Saturday morning we head out for Seattle. Once we get into the city, we need to separate. We can't be seen together and I have to verify that the layout of the Asian Heritage Festival is identical to the proposed map that we have. You'll meet our contact at 4 o'clock at a warehouse at the corner of West Road and President Street in an industrial section of the city. The area should be pretty well deserted at that hour on a Saturday afternoon."

"What do ya mean 'pretty well deserted'? You tol' us this was an abandoned warehouse," Peggy reminded him.

"It is, more or less. The property was recently purchased by Warner Enterprises. They haven't moved in yet so it's empty inside. They also haven't installed an alarm system yet, so you don't have to worry about that."

Ryan held his hand over his mouth to keep from squealing out loud. Peggy wasn't a nice person after all. She and Roger and Vernon were going to break into the warehouse that his mother's company had just bought. Ryan sat stock still trying to hear the rest. Now he had to get back home to warn his mother.

"Our contact has been staking out the warehouse and says it's safe."

"How will we reco'nize this 'contact'?" Vernon asked.

"He'll be the guy with the explosives, you idiot!" Roger hissed angrily. Roger took a breath to calm himself and focused his attention back on the map. "You two will be at the warehouse. This guy is an explosives expert. He was trained in the army, so he knows what he's doing. He'll walk you through it. You have to construct each of the bombs so that after the festival ends on Saturday night, we can go in and place them. They'll all be remote control accessed. At 4 o'clock on Sunday, when the festival is packed, we'll blow the charges."

"Yeah, and we blow them gooks all ta hell!" Vernon sang happily.

Roger chose to ignore the comment. Vernon's motivation here was his obvious prejudice against anyone he didn't consider "American." Roger's motivation was purely the money. He had spent a number of years in the Marines but, as far as he was concerned, they hadn't appreciated his talent. He had been considered "labile" and "extremist" by more than one commanding officer and further advancement in the military was unlikely. He eventually opted not to reenlist and take an honorable discharge. Since then he had become a mercenary. Actually the term "soldier of fortune" described it better. He had amassed exactly that, a fortune, selling out his services to the highest bidder working for terrorist organizations all over the world while managing to stay under the FBI, CIA and Interpol radar and living in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan.

This was the first time he had participated in an attack on American soil. Not that he felt any particular loyalty to the U.S., he just hadn't had the right offer. That is, one that paid enough and that didn't risk blowing his cover. That was up until now. A white supremacist group was looking for someone to place a terrorist strike in the heart of Seattle. They wanted a maximum of Asian casualties to make a point that the influx of Asians into, particularly the western part of the U.S. was unacceptable and would no longer go on unchallenged. Their reasoning wasn't important to Roger. What was important was that they were willing to ante up millions of dollars to make it happen. By the time Roger paid all of his expenses, he would net about $3.5 million hidden safely away in a numbered account in Switzerland.

"We also have to blow up the warehouse to prevent the police from finding any evidence there." Roger explained to them. He neglected to mention to Vernon and Peggy that they would be in the warehouse when it blew up. Soon after Roger signed them on he realized that they were a liability. He knew that Vernon's heart was in it, but the fool was too stupid to keep his mouth shut. He told Vernon not to involve his wife, but idiot that he was, he told Peggy everything thinking that she would want to be a part of it. Peggy was somewhat less prejudiced than Vernon but not so much that the plan bothered her. She, like Roger, was more interested in the money and decided to go along to make sure that they were paid their due.

"With an explosion and fire at the warehouse and the explosions at the festival, we'll have plenty of time to slip out unnoticed," Roger continued.

"Where'll we meet ya ta get outta the city?" Peggy asked.

"I haven't decided yet. I'm considering two different exit strategies. After I see both routes, I'll make a final decision and we'll set a rendezvous point," Roger lied without compunction.

Peggy and Vernon nodded indicating that they were satisfied with the plan.

"Are we gonna pack up now and move camp?" Peggy asked.

"Why would we do that, woman?" growled Vernon.

"So the kids can't find us in the mornin'," she explained to him.

"We aren't moving our campsite, Peggy," Roger said as he turned his back to her.

"Well those kids is gonna be here lookin' for us bright an' early tomorrow mornin'. They wanna go home, Roger," Peggy reminded him.

"They aren't going to come looking for us, Peggy. Don't worry about it," Roger responded.

"The hell they ain't. How ya gonna stop 'em from coming ta look for us?" Peggy asked.

Roger turned to face her. Ryan noticed that even from a distance Roger's face looked menacing in the light of the portable lantern. Roger spoke without emotion, "We're going to kill them."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Ryan clasped his hand hard over his mouth to suppress the scream that desperately wanted to rise from his throat. He couldn't believe what he just heard. Roger intended to kill them! His heart was racing as he tried to stay still and listen to the rest of what Roger was saying.

"We can't take any chance that the police will find them alive. Even if they aren't rescued for a couple more days, they can provide detailed descriptions of all three of us," Roger told her.

Peggy was clearly upset. "Roger, don't ask me to kill those kids 'cause I can't. I won't!"

"Stop acting so goddamned self righteous, Peg. How many kids do you think you're going to kill at the Festival on Sunday? Huh? Do you think you're only going to kill adults? I've got news for you, lady, there will be plenty of kids there and they're going to die just like the adults will."

Peggy hadn't considered that and she preferred to push it out of her mind for the time being and concentrate on the four lost children she had suddenly and inexplicably grown attached to. "This is different, Roger," she tried to justify the situation. "They're just a coupla scared little kids. By the time they git home, they ain't even gonna remember us. They'll be so happy ta be home that they'll fergit all about us."

"I can't take that chance. Vernon and I will head out to the lean-to around 2 o'clock. It will be quick and painless. They'll never know what happened to them. I promise," Roger said. He started to walk toward one of the tents but stopped. He turned and walked back toward Peggy. He didn't stop until his body was nearly touching hers and spoke so softly that Ryan couldn't hear. "Don't get any smart ideas about trying to warn them," he said in a husky, threatening whisper. He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and held the tip at the base of Peggy's throat. "I'll be watching you. You sit here by the lantern and familiarize yourself with the map so you're all ready for tomorrow. Take one step toward those trees and I will kill you. I'll slit your trachea so you can't scream and then I will very carefully cut you to ensure maximum pain and a very slow death. You aren't essential to this plan, my dear. Whether you live or die is immaterial to me." Roger put away the knife and walked to the entrance of his tent.

Ryan couldn't hear what Roger had just said to Peggy, but he saw the knife and got the general idea. He waited until no one was looking in his direction and moved slowly and silently away from the campsite. He had to get back to tell the others as soon as possible so they could get away.

Walking quickly through the dark woods and trying to do it quietly was almost impossible. Ryan was only a few yards from the campsite when he stepped on a small branch which cracked under his weight. Roger was instantly on alert. He grabbed a lantern and walked toward the trees, taking care to keep an eye on Peggy who he knew would like nothing more than to get away from him right now.

"Hello," Roger called. "Is someone out there? Hello."

Ryan ducked behind the nearest tree. It was a narrow pine but Ryan was small and, in the dark, could easily work his way under some low handing branches and lay silently, curled in a ball, until Roger passed by. Roger continued to check the area for a few minutes but seemed fairly satisfied that the noise had been made by an animal. He returned to the campsite and once again sat alone by his tent.

Ryan eased himself out from under the tree and picked his way as carefully as possible through the woods. As he got closer to the lean-to and well out of range of the campsite, he let his guard down and began to run. At first he had been too scared of getting caught to really think about what was happening but now he was less afraid of getting caught and was rapidly becoming more and more afraid of Roger killing him and the others.

"Mason! Mason! Wake up! Wake up!" Ryan said in a loud whisper. "You have to wake up!" Ryan shook his brother's shoulder to arouse him.

"Ry, I'm beat. Let me sleep. Everything will be okay in the morning," Mason said as he turned over.

"Ryan, pipe down!" Rico told him sleepily. "We need some sleep."

"No! You guys have to wake up. I have something important to tell you," Ryan pleaded with them. "We've got to get out of here!"

"What are you talking about, Ryan?" Mason asked as he sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"I was worried about Peggy so I went back to the campsite to make sure she was okay. When I got there, that Roger guy was telling Peggy that he and Vernon are going to kill us at 2 o'clock."

"Ry, you're dreaming," Rico said unconvinced by the story.

"No Ric, I'm not!" Ryan told him emphatically. "There's more. They're going to set off a bunch of bombs at that Festival downtown on Sunday. They know we can identify them so that's why they need to kill us. And Mason, they're going to blow up that warehouse that Mom's company just bought. Remember her telling us about it? She said it was on West Road. Well, Roger said they were going to break in and use it to put the bombs together then they would blow it up to get rid of any evidence."

Rico and Mason were now not only sitting up and wide awake, but were listening with interest. They both knew that Ryan wasn't capable of making up a story this complex. Of the two boys, Mason was the quick thinking one who could come up with a story at the drop of a hat in order to provide an alibi when it looked like he was going to get in trouble for one of his adventures. Ryan, on the other hand, was quiet and studious with no street sense. He could never lie convincingly as Mason knew from trying to get Ryan to cover for him a couple of times in the past. On both occasions, the story blew up in Ryan's face and Mason caught hell for it from his father.

"Are you sure about this?" Mason asked him.

"Yes! I was hiding behind some bushes 'cause I was trying to see Peggy and I could hear everything they said. It's true, Mason. We have to get out of here before Roger and Vernon get here."

"When are they coming back for us?" Rico asked.

"I told you!" Ryan said exasperated that the older boys hadn't initially taken him seriously. "They're coming to kill us at 2 o'clock."

Rico looked at his watch. It was only about 10:30. That gave them plenty of time to get away before Roger and Vernon would come looking for them.

Mason and Rico exchanged long looks. "I think I better wake Lucy up," Rico said.

Within minutes Lucy was awake and the four children were on the move. They set out in a direction opposite to the campsite hoping to put as much distance between themselves and Roger as possible. Rico kept a close watch on the time. He and Mason were concerned that once Roger and Vernon discovered that they were gone and started searching the area, that they could cover a lot more ground a lot faster than four tired children could.

The children started out trying to run but found that the forest presented far too many obstacles. Pine branches were buffeting them in the face as they passed. One branch struck Rico dangerously close to his eye and hard enough to cut the side of his face. As if that wasn't bad enough, rocks and fallen branches were everywhere. Unable to see them, they had each fallen more than once. The flashlight Peggy had given them helped at first. It provided a weak beam of light for a while, but the batteries died after only about twenty minutes.

As they tried to cross what looked in the dark like a relatively clear path, Mason's foot got caught in some kind of hole and sent him sprawling into a thorny bush. The bush made a series of cracking sounds as its branches broke.

"Ouch!" Mason cried as he tried to roll out of the bush.

"Shhh!" the others responded immediately trying to silence him.

"I can't help it," he said in a loud whisper annoyed with the other for shushing him and annoyed at himself for falling. "It hurts!"

Mason's face and hands are forearms were badly scratched from the thorns. As he fell, his leg hit a rock which cut decent sized gash in his shin. Rico found the towel in his backpack and handed it to his best friend.

"Here," he said. "We can't stay here Mason. Let's try and find a stream and you can wash off those cuts."

Mason nodded and Rico helped him stand up and try to take a few steps.

"Is it okay? Can you walk on it?" Lucy asked anxiously.

"I think so," Mason said positively as he took several careful steps on his own. What he wasn't willing to say was that it hurt but that they didn't have the luxury was sitting around until his leg felt better. "Let's keep going, but we have to be more careful."

The others agreed and picked their way more cautiously through the brush.

Jack lay stretched out on top of a sleeping bag dozing lightly. As exhausted as he was, he thought that he would be able to sleep, but his back and leg were both bothering him and lying on the ground wasn't helping any. When he last looked at his watch it was almost midnight. He finally dozed off but was soon jolted awake by what sounded like movement in the nearby brush. He sat up and turned on the battery operated lantern that sat on the ground next to him and shone the light in the direction of the sound.

"What's wrong, Jack?" Tony asked having been awakened by Jack's movement.

"I heard something," Jack replied as he stood with some difficulty.

"What did it sound like?"

"I'm not sure. I was asleep, but I thought it was some rustling in the brush and maybe some voices."

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming?" Tony asked him.

"No, not totally," Jack admitted. "I think I better check it out."

"Jack, this area is full of wildlife. It could have been anything. I doubt it was the kids. Even if they're close by, they wouldn't be moving around after dark. Without a flashlight, you can barely see your hand in front of your face out here."

"I know," Jack agreed, "but I want to check it out anyway. Stay here; I'll yell if I need you."

Jack walked several yards toward where he thought the sound came from. He knew this was stupid and he was wasting energy. Tony was right, it was probably just wildlife or, in point of fact, it may have all been a dream. Jack swept the lantern in front of him and surveyed the area. He couldn't see anything moving and the sound was gone now, so he decided to return to the campsite and try to get some sleep. As he turned, the lantern illuminated a small bush that seemed to be partially crushed.

Jack made his way over to examine the bush. It had been stepped on or trampled by something. A number of the thin, thorny branches were broken and the broken pieces were still supple indicating that the trauma to them was recent. Jack scanned the ground for footprints, but the earth was hard and dry and no prints, human or animal, were visible.

He turned in a slow circle to take one final look when his foot caught on a rock. It took him a second, but with the help of his cane, he was able to maintain his balance. He shined the light source on the rock to get a better look at it. It was then that he noticed what looked like blood on the rock. He bent over and touched it with his fingers; the blood was still wet. Something recently cut itself on the rock as it fell into the bush and crushed it. Jack continued to search the immediate area but could find nothing else. He finally decided to go back and try to get some sleep. Like Tony had said earlier, he couldn't imagine that the kids were wandering around in the dark. Where the blood came from was another story. It probably came from an injured animal, although the lack of a blood trail indicated to Jack that the animal was only superficially injured.

Jack went back to camp. Tony was sitting up waiting for him.

"I was just about to come looking for you," he told Jack. "Did you find anything?"

"Just a trampled bush and a small amount of blood," Jack told him. "It was probably just an animal. I think if a person fell into that thorn bush, it would have hurt enough that they would have made a lot more noise. It barely woke me up and I wasn't in a deep sleep."

Tony agreed with Jack's judgment and laid back down. The two rested quietly although sleep eluded them both.

Not a hundred yards away, Mason, Rico, Lucy and Ryan were slowly making their way through the dark woods. As they wondered what they should do next, they had no idea how very close they had come to crossing paths with their fathers. The going had become very slow. They were all tired, but Ryan and Lucy were reaching a level of exhaustion that was effecting their ability to even maintain their balance. Mason's leg, although he would never admit it, was hurting enough to take his concentration away from the task at hand.

"This doesn't make any sense," Rico said as he stopped in a small patch of moonlight. "We can't keep going like this. We've got to find a place to hide and just stay there until morning."

"You're right," Mason agreed. "Did you see any place where we could hide?"

"Not really," Rico admitted, "but let's start looking for a place. Up until now we've just been trying to get away from those people. We're far enough away. Now we can look for a place to hide."

Ryan and Lucy were too tired to argue so they went along. It was about ten minutes before Mason stopped and pointed down a steep slope that had been formed when an old, underground mine subsided. On the side of the hill, several pine trees had partially uprooted as the ground on the south side of the trees sunk over the years. The trees had stabilized but leaned sharply toward the hillside providing a canopy of pine branches. "Look," he said. "Look at those trees over there. We can hide behind them."

Rico nodded as he focused on the trees that were highlighted in the silver glow of moonlight. "That should work. You and I can take turns keeping watch while everyone else sleeps," Rico suggested. He wondered who was going to take the first shift. Ryan and Lucy were going to fall asleep as soon as they sat down and he felt a responsibility to keep them safe, but he didn't know how he could stay awake for long.

The children eased their way down the hill and under the branches. It was surprisingly comfortable. There was more room than they expected and they could see out from beneath the branches without being seen. Lucy curled up against Rico and it seemed like she was asleep in seconds. Ryan lay on the ground between Rico and Mason and likewise fell asleep almost instantaneously.

"What time is it, Ric?" Mason asked.

Rico looked at his watch. "It's 1:20. They're going to start looking for us in about 40 minutes."

"Yeah, I guess so," Mason agreed. "I don't think there's much chance of them finding us here, especially in the dark."

"What are we going to do in the morning?" Rico asked hoping that his friend had a good answer.

"I don't know. Let's hope we make it 'til morning."

They were both silent for a few moments. They listened to the quiet and their siblings' breathing.

"Mase," Rico started, "are you scared?"

"If I let myself think about it, I am," Mason answered honestly

"Do you think our dads would be scared?"

Mason shrugged in the darkness. "I don't know."

"I wonder why they won't talk about being spies. They must've had some great adventures. I mean, my dad got shot in the neck and yours got hit three times in the stomach. If it was me, I'd tell my kids all about it."

"Maybe they were sworn to secrecy," Mason suggested.

"Maybe," Rico agreed. "You know, my mom was a spy, too. They all worked together."

"Really? Your mom was a spy?" Mason was amazed that anyone as delicate and pretty as Michelle could be a spy. He imagined his father without a limp and his Uncle Tony chasing down the bad guys together with guns blazing. But in his wildest dreams he couldn't see Michelle running along side of them.

"I don't know if she was a real spy like Dad. She was probably more like a computer spy. I don't think she ever did any dangerous field work."

"Probably not," Mason agreed. "I don't think they let girls do that kind of work."

The two fell silent again for a minute or two. This time it was Mason who spoke.

"Ric, you can go to sleep for a while. I think I can stay awake. I'll wake you up if anything happens."

"You sure, Mase?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

Rico took off his watch and handed it to Mason. "Here, if you push this button it lights up so you know what time it is. Wake me up in an hour and I'll take a turn."

Mason agreed and Rico lay down on the ground grateful to have a chance to sleep.

Peggy sat staring intently at the map in the lantern light. She was staring at it but hadn't read a street or place name on it. All she could think about were the children. Peggy knew that with every breath she took, the time for Roger to kill the children grew nearer.

She had never had any children herself and, in point of fact, didn't really like children. They seemed like too much bother. All that work just to give birth to them and then they just cried and spit up and dirtied diapers. It just never seemed all that worthwhile. But in the last few hours she had decided that if she had children, she would want them to be just like those four. They were polite and well mannered. She wondered about their parents and how worried they must be. She wondered what they were like. Were they rich like Roger guessed they were? They had to be well educated; even the children spoke flawless English. She imagined that their mothers were movie-star gorgeous and that their fathers were handsome and successful businessmen who rarely raised their voices and never even considered hitting their wives.

It was strange. When she was around the children she felt needed and wanted by them in a way she had never felt before. She wondered if that was how a real mother felt and wished there was a way to help them. She would warn them if she could, but she knew that Roger was keeping an eye on her and would kill her if she made any attempt to get away. At the moment, Peggy was more concerned with keeping herself alive than keeping the kids alive. _Maybe that's what sets me apart from a real mother,_ she thought. _Their own mothers would probably give their lives for their children without a moment's hesitation._

Just yards away Roger sat alone in front of his tent. He watched Peggy and Vernon sitting in the lantern light with the map. Peggy was staring at it intently, but Roger doubted that she was really seeing it. He shouldn't have told her about killing the kids until it was time to do it. By doing so, he had given her time to think about it and to scheme against him. _What could she possibly do to stop me?_ Roger wondered. He was superior both physically and intellectually. Whatever she tried, he would be able to thwart her. He wasn't worried about Vernon. That fool would go along with anything including killing children, especially since two of them were obviously part of a lesser race in Vernon's mind. No, Vernon would not be a problem.

Roger's mind drifted away from Peggy and Vernon. He needed to plan his operation. Killing four little kids should be easy, but part of Roger's success over the years was that he planned for every contingency. The basic plan was simple. He would slit each child's throat while they slept. He should be able to do that with a minimum of noise and, if done right, he could do it without ever waking any of them up. He hoped to kill the older ones first since they would be slightly better equipped to fight back. The two little ones would be no problem at all. Even if they woke up and tried to get away, they would be easily captured and killed. Roger was a little unnerved by this latest development. He had never killed children before. Oh, of course children had been killed in explosions that he'd set or by rockets that he'd launched, but they were collateral damage, casualties of war. That was to be expected. Slitting a child's throat with one's own hand was a different thing. He tried to ignore his concerns. These children were collateral damage like any others and he couldn't allow himself to think differently.

Roger stood and returned to his tent for a moment. Peggy watched him hoping that she could take the opportunity to slip away but was disappointed to see him stepping out of the tent again within a couple of seconds. As he did, he slipped a sharp hunting knife into his belt, then he took out his gun and attached a silencer to the barrel. He strode purposefully over to Peggy and Vernon.

"Get up," he ordered them. "It's time to go."

Peggy took a deep breath as she stood. "Roger, there has to be another way…"

"There is no other way," Roger retorted sharply. "This is it. It has to be done."

"Well, you can do it then!" Peggy said, her voice quivering with emotion. She had thought it all over carefully and had decided that she had very little to lose. "I'm not killing those kids, Roger and you can't make me."

She was right and Roger knew it. He really couldn't make her do it. He could kill her, of course, and that would solve one problem, but he needed her in Seattle. Constructing all of those bombs was a three person job. Roger needed both Peggy and Vernon at the warehouse to help the weapons expert he had hired. Peggy had him over a barrel. Roger considered his options for a moment.

"Alright, Peggy, you're right. I can't make you kill the kids," he conceded. "But that won't stop me. Vernon and I can take care of four rugrats. You can stay here."

Peggy started to sit down with a satisfied smirk on her face.

"Oh, not out here, you fool. Get in the tent."

Peggy walked reluctantly into the tent.

"Good," Roger said as he followed her in the tent. "Sit down there," he pointed to a spot near one of the tent's support poles.

She was visibly shaking now and was too afraid to talk. Before he made her go into the tent she had been relatively sure that he couldn't kill her, but now she wasn't sure of anything. Peggy watched Roger pull a length of rope from their supplies. He proceeded to tie her wrists tightly together and then secure them to one of the tent's support poles. She was beginning to relax a bit. He was just going to make sure she didn't get away. He wasn't going to kill her. Once her hands were secured, he bound her ankles.

"I don't think you're going anywhere, my dear," he said mockingly. He turned and picked up a dirty rag from the ground and held it in front of Peggy's face. She turned her head to avoid its sour smell. "Open up," he ordered her. Peggy kept her face turned away from him. Undaunted, Roger grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked it, pulling her head backwards. As he did it, she screamed involuntarily and he took the opportunity to shove the rag deep in her mouth causing her to gag. Tears filled her eyes as Roger used duct tape to keep her from working the rag out of her mouth with her tongue. "Have a good time, precious," he told her as he left the tent. "Come!" he yelled at Vernon who immediately complied. "We have some unfinished business."


	6. Chapter 6

_Hi everyone and thanks for the great reviews! This has been a hard story to write and it really helps when I get a lot of reviews. (HINT! HINT!) So if you are reading and enjoying the story (or even if you hate the story), take a second and let me know. It helps me to know what you like and don't like about the story. Here's chapter 6. Please, please, please give me feedback._

Chapter 6

Roger and Vernon set off through the woods. Within ten minutes they could see the lean-to and Roger indicated to Vernon to turn off his flashlight and slow down his pace. Roger didn't want to take any chance of waking one of the children. Vernon stayed behind Roger as the smaller man drew his knife and moved stealthily toward the crude shelter. He stopped and stood behind a tree for a moment steeling himself for the task at hand. He finally nodded at Vernon and stepped around the tree to the side of the lean-to. Again he took a breath and, in a single motion, swung around the makeshift wall and into the shelter of the structure. He dropped to his knees in preparation to grab the first child before he realized that there was no one there. He blinked, thinking that his eyes were just not adjusted to the darkness, and looked again, but there was still no one there. The blankets that Peggy had given them were in a jumble on the ground, but the children were gone. Roger spun around and scanned the immediate area as he grabbed the flashlight from Vernon. In its beam they could see nothing. No sleeping children, no movement, nothing.

"Peggy!" Roger spat as he pointed a finger in Vernon's face. "This is Peggy's doing! She warned those kids! I knew it! I knew I couldn't trust that bitch!"

With that Roger started off through the woods at a pace that Vernon could barely match. He reached the campsite and strode into the tent where Peggy sat bound and gagged. Without warning he reared back with a steel-toed boot and kicked her in the ribs. A muffled scream came from her throat. She attempted to curl up and protect herself but the way she was tied up made it impossible. She was able to turn slightly and the second kick hit her back at the level of her kidney. Again, a muffled scream and now sobbing came up from her throat.

"Where are they, Peggy?" Roger roared as he yanked the duct tape from her face and pulled the rag out of her mouth. "Where the hell are they?"

"Where is who?" Peggy sobbed.

Roger kicked her again. "The kids, that's who! Don't play stupid with me, you bitch. I know you hid them somewhere. That's why you were gone for so long. Where did you hide them?"

"Roger, please stop," she begged. "I didn't hide 'em. They was in the lean-to when I left 'em."

This time Roger punched her hard in the stomach. "Well they're not there now and you were missing for a long time when you said you were going to the stream."

Peggy was crying and gasping for breath. "I left 'em in the lean-to. Okay, okay, I took 'em some food. I couldn't let 'em starve, but they were there when I left 'em. I didn't even know you was plannin' on killin' 'em, Roger. Please don't hit me again, please."

"So you want me to believe that you fed them but you left them there in the shelter?"

"That's the Gods-honest truth, Roger. I swear it. They was there when I left," she cried.

"So where are they now?"

"They wanted ta go home real bad. Maybe they just decided to take off once they're bellies was full," Peggy speculated.

"They couldn't have gone far. It's too dark for them to move very fast without any light."

Peggy stayed silent on the subject of light knowing that Roger would continue to beat her if he knew that she gave the children a flashlight.

"We need to find them and we've got to do it soon. If we don't leave for the city by early afternoon, we won't make it to meet our contact." Roger reached down to cut the ropes from Peggy's hands and feet. "Come on," he said as he pulled her up by one arm. "You're coming with us this time."

"How're we ever gonna find 'em in the dark?" Peggy asked. She stood partially doubled over from the pain. "They gotta head start on us and we don't even know which direction they took. Why don't we just head inta Seattle and leave the kids out here? We'll be long gone before anybody finds 'em."

"If it starts getting into the afternoon, that's what we'll have to do, but in the meantime, I intend to do everything I can to find those kids. They're a loose end that I need to tie up. I've been in this business far too long without arousing the suspicion of the authorities to have that ruined by a little slip up like this," Roger informed her. "It's 2:30 now. We've got about 10 hours to find them. Get moving!" Roger grabbed two lanterns and handed one to Vernon and one to Peggy.

The threesome headed into the woods for what they all suspected would be a long night of looking for the children. At the same time, the children were rather peacefully nestled in a bed of pine needles barely a mile and a half from the campsite. For the first couple of hours after settling in, Rico and Mason took turns staying awake, but the extreme quiet of the night and their level of fatigue got the best of them and they decided that it was okay for both of them to sleep.

The sun began peeking through the pine branches and that, combined with an uncomfortable position from his sister leaning against him, caused Rico to begin to stir. "Lucy, move over," he whispered as he tried to stretch and change position.

Lucy was sound asleep and not moving anywhere, so Rico decided that he was the one who would have to move. He moved carefully several inches to the left trying not to disturb Lucy. The movement was enough to wake Mason, who like his father, was a feather-light sleeper.

"Everything okay?" Mason asked in a quiet voice.

"Yeah, I'm just trying to move over," Rico said softly.

"Are Ryan and Lucy both sleeping?"

"Yeah, I thought we could let them sleep for a while. Is that okay with you?"

"Fine with me, I've got no place to go," Mason said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "What time is it?"

Rico checked his watch. "About 6:15."

Mason nodded his thanks and lay back taking in the intense pine smell and the sounds of the forest. Some movement in the brush caught Mason's attention. He turned toward Rico who had also heard the noise and was propped on his elbows in order to peak under the pine branches. They continued to listen. Mason heard it first and Rico thought he could actually see the color drain from his friend's face as he, too, heard the voices.

"Roger, we been out here all night. Those kids is long gone. Let's just pack up camp and git the hell outta here," an exhausted Peggy pleaded.

Rico and Mason exchanged nervous glances.

"We need to find those kids, Peggy and we're going to keep looking," Roger said.

"There's a stream down there. I'm gonna get some water," Peggy informed Roger.

Mason and Rico watched from their hiding place as Peggy's feet passed just a yard or so from them.

"Bring some fer me, Peg," Vernon called after her.

"Like hell," she shouted back. "You want water, you git your own!"

Vernon sighed loudly and again Mason and Rico watched as a pair of feet, this time in work boots, made their way down the hill past them. Roger must have decided to join them because seconds later his feet followed. All of the movement so near to them caused Ryan and Lucy to begin to wake up. Their older brothers quickly silenced them.

"Shhh," Rico said almost inaudibly into Lucy's ear.

Lucy nodded and huddled close to her brother as if that somehow made her more invisible. They all lay motionless and listened as Roger, Peggy and Vernon made their way down to the stream. They only spent a couple of minutes there when, from their hiding place, they could see Roger come back up the hill. He stopped a few feet from them and called down to Peggy and Vernon to hurry. The four children lay just feet away praying that Roger would move. None of them even dared to breathe. They watched Roger's feet and willed them to walk away. But instead, Roger stood there waiting for the others.

"Finish drinking and get up here!" Roger ordered them. His booming voice made all four children jump. "You're wasting time. We need to find those kids!"

Roger crouched down to retie his shoe and the children's heart rates went up another 20 beats per minute. They were sure he was about to see them when he stood up abruptly and stomped his foot in front of him. "Get away from me!" he said in an annoyed tone as his feet danced to get away from something the children couldn't see. "That's right, get out of here."

A second later a snake slithered from near Roger's feet and under the branches of the tree to share a hiding place with the children. The boys recognized it immediately as harmless and, frankly, more frightened of them than they were of it. Lucy, on the other hand, was terrified of snakes, harmless or otherwise. Rico knew it and tried to press her face against his chest to prevent her from seeing the snake, but he was too late. Fearing that she might scream, he clamped a hand over her mouth before she had the chance.

"It won't hurt you," he whispered into her ear. "Calm down! You're okay."

Lucy's entire body shook as the snake sped past Mason and Ryan and straight toward her. Rico tightened his grip on her to keep her from moving while Mason tried to nudge the snake with his foot to get it to change direction. The already agitated snake didn't need much more provocation. It took a defensive position coiling up, hissing and flattening its head to look menacing. Mason eased slightly away from snake whose mouth was now open to show a row of tiny but sharp teeth. A bite from the creature would be harmless, but Mason knew that it would hurt and doubted whether any of them could remain quiet should the snake strike. The three boys both watched the snake and tried to keep an eye on Roger, Vernon and Peggy while Lucy lay trembling against Rico.

Peggy's voice broke the silence. "So, what's your plan now that the sun's up?"

"We keep looking. Finding them in the daytime should be easy," Roger told her. "Let's go this way. If I was looking for the easiest escape route, I'd go downhill. They're kids; they're not going to think this out. They're going to do what comes naturally."

"Alright," Vernon said dully. "How 'bout if Peg and me goes that way," he pointed to the left, "and you go that way." This time he pointed right.

"Yeah, we can cover more ground that way," Peggy agreed. "We can meet back at camp. Tell us what time."

Roger made a dismissive sound. "Yeah right, you think I trust you two to go off on your own. I'll never see you again. Nice try. I'm impressed, Vernon. I didn't think you were smart enough to think of that. No, we can cover plenty of ground together. You just stay with me."

The children watched as the three pairs of shoes disappeared in an eastbound direction. They lay still for several minutes waiting for all sounds of the three adults to fade away. By that time, the snake had decided that the children were not a threat and it continued its journey out from under the tree and on the lookout for a sunny spot to spend the day.

"Lucy, it's gone," Rico finally said. "It went out from under the trees. I can't even see it anymore."

"How far did it go?" Lucy asked still unwilling to move her face from her brother's chest. "Could you tell where it went? I don't want to go in that direction."

"It's okay. We'll go in a different direction. For crying out loud, Lucy!" Rico said, exasperation clear in his voice. "That snake won't hurt you. You need to be more worried about Roger than that stupid little snake."

Lucy sat up and willed herself to stop shaking. Rico was right. She had to get a hold of herself. She had never seen her mother this upset and in everything she did, she tried to be just like her mother. Nobody was as cool under pressure as her mom. Lucy remembered when Rico fell at the playground and got a bloody nose and split his lip. There was blood every where and all of the other kids were screaming and all of the other mothers were upset and offering advice, but her mother calmly helped Rico up and took care of him. She never seemed a bit upset even though Carmen was pulling at her arm and crying the whole time.

Rico and Mason turned their attention away from Lucy. "That was really close," Mason said stating the obvious.

"Tell me about it," Rico retorted. "Where do we go now?"

"Well, one thing's for sure, we're not going down hill."

"You've got that right," Rico agreed. "Maybe we should just stay here for a while."

"No way!" Lucy interjected. "I'm not staying here with that snake close by."

"Lucy, it won't hurt you!" Rico told her again.

"I don't care. I'm still not staying here. Besides, if the police are looking for us, they're not going to find us under these trees."

"She's probably right," Mason said. "We should give Roger a good head start and then get out of here."

"How long do you want to wait?" Rico asked.

"I don't know; a half hour, maybe." It was more of a question than a statement.

"Sounds good," Rico agreed while not being any surer of himself than Mason.

The four sat silently while they listened for any sign of their pursuers. All four were hungry and after their interrupted sleep, were still tired. They missed their parents and their beds and good hot food and if all of that wasn't enough, the danger that they were in was now clearer than it had ever been before. None of them was sure just how much longer they could do this.

Rico sat with his eyes closed, deep in thought. He finally opened them and looked for a moment at everyone. His gaze eventually rested on Mason. "Mase, they almost caught us a little while ago."

"Yeah, Ric, I was there. I remember. Tell me something I don't know."

"If they found us, they were going to kill us."

"What's your point? We all know that."

"If they find all four of us together, they're going to kill all four of us. Our best chance to get away is to split up. They can't go in two directions. It gives at least two of us a better chance to come out of this alive. What do you think?" Rico asked sincerely hoping that Mason could shoot holes in his theory. He didn't want to separate from Mason. He wasn't sure if he could cope with Lucy by himself.

"You want to split up?" Mason asked incredulously.

"No, I don't _want_ to. I think we _have_ to." Rico answered. Lucy and Ryan remained silent while their older brothers discussed the issue.

Mason looked away and then down at the ground. Deep down he knew Rico was right, but that didn't make him like the idea. "You're right. We need to split up."

"Okay, which way do you and Ryan want to go?" Rico asked giving Mason his choice.

Mason shook his head. "No, we can't split into families. You need to take Ryan and I need to take Lucy."

The others looked at Mason like he had three heads. "I don't understand, Mase," Rico admitted.

Mason sighed and explained. "If they catch up with two of us and kill us, we don't want it to be two from the same family."

Ryan and Lucy looked back and forth between the older boys wondering what they were going to decide. "I guess you're right. I never thought about it that way. Ryan and I will go that way," Rico said pointing west.

Mason nodded. "Okay," he said tentatively. "Lucy and I will go that way." Mason pointed a little east of north. "Let's go."

The four crawled out from under the trees and, once again, stowed their backpacks onto their backs. The two sets of siblings said goodbye to one another. Even at their young ages, they had a sense that they may never see one another again. Ryan and Lucy both started to cry. The older boys could feel themselves welling up but both concentrated hard on emulating their fathers. _Spies don't cry_, they told themselves. Neither could imagine his father crying. Mason and Rico looked at each other for a long moment and then shook hands. That seemed the appropriate thing to do at the moment. Then they paired off and made their separate ways through the forest.

Jack and Tony had been awake since long before dawn. The second the sun rose over the horizon, the two of them anxiously resumed their search. The early morning brought a significant amount of chatter over the radio. The officers in the field discussed the strategy for today's search with their operation's base at the Bauer house. They needed to make a major revision in their strategy. The fact that they had covered the amount of ground that they had and still weren't able to locate the children made them suspect that the children had continued to move rather than wait in one location to be rescued as the search teams hoped they would. Additional men were being brought in by helicopter and dropped off in clearings. To make matters worse, the weather forecast called for rain beginning in the afternoon. That and the fact that the children had now been missing over 36 hours raised everyone's sense of urgency.

Jack and Tony continued along their search grid. The sun had risen, but the sky was a steely gray and the temperature had dropped considerably since yesterday. The air was heavy around them as if trying to hold as much water in as possible before the inevitable downpour. Neither of them spoke except when necessary. Both were bothered by the fact that their children were going to be wet and cold once it started to rain. They hoped that they were at least able to find some shelter under a heavy cover of trees. That would make it a bit more bearable.

Wes Grimes called the teams over the radio to check their positions. Tony radioed their coordinates back. As he listened to the other teams, he knew that he and Jack we no longer covering as much ground as the others. Jack's always noticeable limp had become pronounced since late yesterday. Tony knew Jack was in pain but didn't bother to ask him how he felt knowing that he would simply say that he was "fine". Wes reassigned two of the teams to make their section of grid overlap with Tony and Jack's.

With no one on the radio, silence fell between Jack and Tony again. Jack spoke first. "I'm slowing you down. The next time we find a clearing big enough, I'll radio the coordinates to Wes and have him send in a chopper to extract me. You can go with one of the other teams." His quiet voice sounded crestfallen.

"Jack, you don't have to do that. You and I are still covering a lot of ground. If you can make it, keep going. If not, then have Grimes send in a chopper."

Jack said nothing but kept walking. It was nearly 10 o'clock and again there was no sign of the children. He wasn't sure if he was more physically drained or emotionally drained. He had let everyone down: Tony and Michelle, Kate, the kids themselves. He was supposed to be watching the kids and now here they were lost in miles and miles of the densest pine forest imaginable. _Not that this is the first time I've let everyone down_, he thought. _Teri. I should have never let myself love anyone after Teri. I wouldn't be here right now if I had never fallen in love with Kate._ The guilt and self loathing that he had experienced for years after Teri's death, that had driven him to a heroin addiction, had been creeping back over the last two days and at the moment, was threatening to overtake him entirely.

"What's up there?" Tony's voice interrupted Jack's thoughts.

"What do you see?" Jack asked trying to follow Tony's gaze.

"There," Tony pointed. "It looks like a camp site."

Tony's pace quickened and he stepped into a small clearing. In front of him were two tents and the remnants of a fire. "Hello," he called. "Hello. Is anyone here? Hello."

By now Jack had reached the clearing as well. He too shouted greetings hoping to get someone's attention. "Strange place to be camping," he commented to Tony.

"Yeah," Tony agreed, "unless you're just trying to get away from civilization."

"Or you're trying to hide something," Jack added.

Tony had already started toward one of the tents and Jack made his way toward the other. He had just shouted "hello" a couple more times and lifted back the flap to the tent when Tony shouted to him.

"Jack! Come here," Tony's voice was excited but Jack recognized that it wasn't a happy sort of excited.

Jack moved as fast as he could. Tony knelt in the middle of the tent holding a piece of rope in his hands. He showed the knot in the rope to Jack. "Special Forces?"

Jack took the rope and examined the knot. "Yeah, someone with Special Forces training made this knot."

"Look at the end," Tony directed. "It was cut with a very sharp knife."

Jack nodded in agreement.

"There's more rope over there and some duct tape. Someone was bound and gagged here," Tony said, his tone now sounding more than a little worried.

Jack pulled out their radio. "Base, this is Bauer; come in. Base, come in, please," Jack said urgently.

"We copy Jack." It was Michelle's voice on the other end of the radio. Jack was hoping for Wes Grimes. "Did you find something?"

"Yeah, but it's not the kids. I need you to send a crime scene team to these coordinates," Jack checked his GPS and gave Michelle the coordinates.

"What have you got, Jack?" This time it was Grimes' voice.

"Tony and I came across a deserted campsite. Whoever was here left two tents along with food and equipment. We found a couple of lengths of knotted rope and some duct tape on the ground. It appears that someone was bound and gagged at some point. Someone here has Special Forces training based on the knots he made. The ropes were cut with a sharp knife, might be a military style. At any rate, I think we have to consider this person armed and potentially dangerous."

"Jack, do you think he has the kids?" This time it was Kate's panicked voice on the other end of the radio.

"I don't know, Sweetheart," he answered gently not caring who heard his term of endearment. All he wanted to do at that moment was to hold her and tell her again how sorry he was. "Whatever happened here, there's no sign of a struggle. There's no blood in the immediate area. Wes, what's the ETA on the crime scene team."

"That's going to be at least twenty-five minutes, Jack. We have a team on standby. I'm also sending in search and rescue dogs. They lost the kids' scents near the house, but if the kids were at the campsite, maybe they can pick up the scent again."

"Copy that," Jack returned. "Tony and I will search the campsite and see what we can come up with while we wait for the team." He hooked the radio back on his belt and looked at Tony. "I'll go search the other tent," he said as he turned and headed toward the tent flap.

Tony watched Jack go. He looked utterly defeated which was also how Tony felt. Up until now, the two devoted fathers had both been worried, of course, but things had suddenly changed. When they thought the kids were just lost, they were pretty confident that the older boys had the skills to keep the four of them relatively safe and it was just a matter of finding them. Even the wildlife in the area didn't worry them all that much. There was plenty of easy prey for bears and bobcats. As long as the kids didn't bother the animals, and all of them knew better than to do that, it was likely that the animals would simply make some noise to protect their territory and otherwise leave the children alone. Now Jack and Tony had something serious to worry about. Why was some guy with Special Forces training camping in the middle of nowhere? He obviously wasn't alone. There were two tents and enough food for three or four people. What was going on? Had the kids stumbled into the middle of this or were they miles away on the other side of the forest?

The gray sky was certainly doing nothing to lift the dejected spirits of the two pairs of children. They all kept looking up to see if the rain seemed imminent.

"I hope there's no lightening," Ryan commented. "I don't like lightening."

"Yeah," Rico agreed. "Lightening would be bad with all these trees around us." He remembered his parents' warnings never to go under a tree in a lightening storm. He wondered if it started lightening how they could possibly get out from under the trees. "If we find a clearing, maybe we should hide near it. That way, we can go into the clearing if there's any lightening." Rico wasn't really sure that made any sense. They would still be surrounded by trees unless it was a really large clearing.

Ryan seemed unhappy with that idea. "You want to stand out in the lightening storm? I usually hide under my bed when there's lightening," he admitted.

"I know you don't like lightening, Ry, but your bed is miles away and I think it would be safer to be in the middle of a clearing than to hide under a tree that might get struck by lightening."

Ryan hoped Rico was right, but, nonetheless, he didn't like the idea.

Lucy and Mason were similarly considering the possibility of rain, although neither had considered lightening. It was just that neither of them enjoyed the thought of getting soaking wet without a change of clothes and having to spend the night that way. Mason didn't say it out loud, but he wondered if rescuers would stop searching if it started raining.

"We need some place to stay dry when it starts raining," Lucy said.

"You're right," Mason replied. "You know, my dad told me once that silver miners used to build shacks to live in out here. He said some of them are still standing. It would be cool to find one."

Lucy said nothing. Finding an old miner's shack would be almost too good to be true at this point. They were lucky enough to find some bushes with berries on them which seemed like a feast at the time. Now if they could just find a safe place to rest. Last night's nocturnal wanderings had left Lucy tired and wanting desperately to sleep while it appeared to her that Mason wasn't tired in the least. She almost asked him to stop for a while, but knew it was best for them to keep moving. They were safest when they were on the move, so she would keep moving. She focused hard on a mental picture of her mother. She knew her mother wouldn't stop no matter how tired she was and neither would Lucy. She drew a deep breath as if to steel herself and pressed onward.


	7. Chapter 7

_Hi and thanks again for all of the wonderful reviews. As I said at the beginning of the last chapter, this story has been harder to write than all of my previous stories, so I think that makes me appreciate the reviews even more! Thanks, too, to those of you reading my old stuff and reviewing. I like knowing that someone is still reading my old stories, too._

_Now on with the story…_

Chapter 7

It was almost 1 o'clock and Roger, Peggy and Vernon hadn't had any luck in finding the children. Roger looked at his watch resigned that they had to stop looking for the kids and turn their energies toward their real mission. If they didn't head into Seattle now there was no way for them to connect with their contact at the warehouse by 4 o'clock. As it was they didn't have time to pack and were going to have to abandon most of their camping gear. They would return to the campsite and pick up only the necessities.

They walked briskly back toward the campsite as Roger made a mental list of what they needed to take with them. They were less than 50 yards away when the sounds of voices and police radio feed caused them to stop dead in their tracks. The tree cover was too dense to see very far, but there was enough noise coming from the clearing that they knew that their campsite was crawling with police. Roger tried to think of anything at the campsite that could tie the equipment to him and he was sure he hadn't left anything behind. In fact, when he thought it over, there wasn't even anything particularly suspicious at the site. He was carrying his weapons. There was a rather expensive two-way satellite radio there that he used to communicate with the explosives expert he had hired, but there was no way for the police to trace those communications and serious hikers and mountain climbers often carried that type of radio. Other than that, they really only brought standard camping supplies with them.

"What do we do now?" Peggy asked in a panicked whisper.

Roger waved his arm to direct them down the hill and toward a nearby stream. They moved quickly, trying to make as little noise as possible, but in point of fact, the police teams at the scene were making enough noise to drown out any sounds the trio running through the brush could have made. They reached the stream in less than a minute at which point they were well out of earshot of the police.

"If we follow the stream we should be able to avoid the police and still get out to the main road and into the city on time."

"What about all our stuff?" Vernon asked. "Are we jus' gonna leave it there?"

"Depending on the level of confusion after the bombing, we may be able to sneak back here for it," Roger lied to him. _You sap! _Roger thought. _By the time this is all over they'll be picking up parts of you all over Seattle!_

"And if we can't?" Vernon asked.

"Don't worry about it," Roger said impatiently. "You're making more money this week than you make in two years. Forget about it and keep your mind on getting out of here and making this operation a success."

The crime scene team had arrived at the campsite and was now in the middle of a methodical search of the tents and the immediate area. Unfortunately they weren't turning up much of interest. Based on the clothing they found, it became clear that a woman and two men had been living there. Other than the usual camping supplies, they found a number of maps of Seattle including one of the Asian Heritage Festival. Not that campers having maps of the region was unusual, it was just the number of different maps they found, including street maps printed from the internet of specific areas of the city. The satellite radio aroused some suspicion as well, but nothing pointed to the identity of the campers, what they were doing here or why they had apparently abandoned the site.

The K-9 unit Grimes ordered to the scene arrived about twenty minutes after the crime scene team. As they had done when the children were first reported missing, each dog was given clothing that had recently been worn by one of the children. The dogs eagerly worked their way across the campsite but found nothing until they reached the edge of the clearing. All four children seemed to have been at that location but nowhere else in or around the tents. Jack and Tony watched the dogs intently and trailed just behind their handlers.

Once they left the campsite, the dogs all followed the same trail into the forest. The dog following Ryan's scent, a German shepherd named Shadow, broke away from the others and headed toward the bushes where the boy had hidden to listen to the adult's conversation the night before.

Jack and Tony eyed the dog nervously. "What's he doing," Jack asked. "Why isn't that dog with the rest of them?"

The dog's handler watched the dog for a moment and then answered. "It appears that one of the children spent some time away from the others." Shadow sniffed the bush for a long time before continuing to the pine tree where Ryan had hidden from Roger. "The child was here, too, under this tree," the handler told Jack.

"Which child is he following?" Tony asked not really sure he wanted to know. It bothered him that one of the children had been singled out and separated from the others.

The handler held up a sweatshirt that the dog was taking the scent from. "Whoever this belongs to," she said.

"That's Ryan's," Jack answered. He looked at Tony. "That's odd. Ryan isn't terribly independent. Not like the other three. He isn't likely to go off on his own willingly."

Tony tried to quell Jack's fears. "He really wasn't that far from the other kids; thirty or forty feet, that's all. It's not like he went in a different direction."

Jack nodded wishing that Tony's words made him feel better, but they didn't. He did feel a little better as Shadow followed a scent that nearly converged with the other dogs as they moved deeper into the forest. The dogs continued without stopping for the next ten minutes or so until they reached the lean-to. All four dogs ran into the shelter sniffing frantically at the blankets.

"Do you recognize the blankets?" one of the handlers asked Jack and Tony.

"No," Jack answered. "They didn't have blankets with them when they left our house. The blankets must belong to the campers. Those are army surplus, similar to the ones back at the campsite."

The handler radioed the officers at the campsite to send a couple of members of the crime scene team to try and collect trace evidence from the lean-to. In the mean time, the dogs would continue to follow the children's scent.

By four o'clock the rain was falling in torrents and the sky was the color of dusk. It started around 2:30 with a misty drizzle and slowly increased in intensity. The harder the rain fell, the more depressed the mood became at the Bauer's house. Kate and Michelle sat on the back porch swing staring out into the rain just hoping beyond hope that their children would come innocently walking out of the woods as if they hadn't been missing for the last two full days.

Carmen sat on the top step of the porch protected from the rain by the awning overhanging the porch. The Bauer's dog lay next to her with his head in her lap. She petted him absently while staring into the rain just like the adults. Michelle had grown worried about her youngest child over the last day. She was normally such a happy-go-lucky little girl. Every simple thing made her smile: flowers in the garden or putting on a pink dress. And she chatted constantly. She didn't care who was listening. She would talk to the other children or her parents or the dog or even her stuffed animals. In the last day she had become nearly silent, speaking only when spoken to or when she needed something and, despite everyone's attempts, no one could make her smile. Michelle had tried repeatedly to talk to her, as had every other adult in the house. When anyone tried to engage her in play, she shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't feel like playing. Now as the rain fell surrounding them all with a cool damp air, Carmen seemed even more morose. She finally pushed Frankie's head from her lap and walked slowly to the swing where her mother sat. Big tears filled her eyes as she climbed into Michelle's lap.

"Mommy," she whispered in a quivering voice. "Does Daddy have a raincoat?"

"Yes, Sweetie. Daddy and all of the rescuers have raincoats."

"That's good," Carmen answered without seeming very happy about it. She thought for a moment before she spoke again as if trying to decide if she wanted to ask the next question. "Do Lucy and Rico have raincoats?"

"No, Baby," Michelle answered as she fixed one of Carmen's braids.

"They're gonna get all wet," she said as a tear or two made their way down her face.

"I know, Sweetie," Michelle said no longer trying to hold back her own tears.

Carmen pressed her face against Michelle's neck. "What if they don't ever come home, Mommy?" she asked barely able to speak through her sobs. "What will we do if they don't come home?"

Unwilling to concede to herself or others that this was even a possibility until now, Michelle clung to Carmen. She hated that Carmen had been the first to acknowledge this possibility out loud. She hated that Carmen's perfect childhood, one of such happiness, had been destroyed; her innocence ripped from her. She was angry about it. She was angry at the kids for wandering away when they knew better than to do so. She was angry at Jack for not keeping a closer eye on them. She was angry at Tony for being out of town when it all happened. But she was most angry at herself for going to work that day; she should have stayed home. Tony had to work to support them, but it was her responsibility to take care of Rico and Lucy and Carmen and, in her mind, she had failed them. Now she had to try and give Carmen a reasonable answer to her question: What will we do if they don't come home. Michelle didn't have a reasonable answer. All she could do was cry and answer her precious daughter honestly. "I don't know, Baby," she whispered through her own tears. "I don't know what we'll do."

Even the police officers manning the "command center" in the Bauer's dining room felt the change in the mood that had accompanied the change in the weather. They were largely quiet and spoke only when necessary. Radio transmissions were now few and far between. All of the rescue teams had been reassigned into the area near the campsite. The dogs had followed the children's scents to the mangled bush that Mason had fallen into. The dog following Mason's scent had barked and yipped excitedly as she sniffed at the blood on the rock. Jack and Tony were nearly sick when they remembered the noise that woke Jack and realized how close the children had been to them the night before. That it was his son's blood on the rock and not the blood of some animal as he had believed the night before, was devastating to Jack. Knowing that his son was hurt and he hadn't been there to help him was almost unbearable.

The dogs were further able to follow the scent to the small stand of trees where the children hid for most of the last night. Shortly after that, the children's trail seemed to diverge as if they had been separated but the rain prevented the dogs from following the scent any further.

"It doesn't make any sense," Jack said shaking his head. "They wouldn't have separated voluntarily."

"Even if they did make some decision to split up, wouldn't Mason have stayed with Ryan and Rico with Lucy?" Tony added.

"Tony's right," Jack told the team over the radio. "I don't believe the kids made the decision to separate. I think they were forced to do it."

The idea that the children had been forcibly separated was frightening to everyone involved. It was clear that there were three adults living at the abandoned campsite. If they had wanted to help the children, they would have used their satellite radio to call the police. No, it was clear that their intent was to do some harm to the children and with the children's scent trails now going in two different directions, police, rescuers and parents all felt certain that the children were now in dangerous hands.

Rico and Ryan continued winding their way through the woods looking for a sheltered place to wait out the coming rain. The terrain in the area was difficult to traverse. A hundred years earlier a vein of silver had been discovered nearby and the area was overrun with would-be miners trying to make their fortunes in silver. Many trees were felled and lots of mines were dug, but few of those mines produced. The disappointed miners left the region deserting the land once more. Eventually the trees reseeded and grew up again, but the heavily undermined ground could not support their weight. The mines subsided leaving holes and pits everywhere. Rico and Ryan were careful to avoid the pits that tended to be thick with barbed bushes. But on the positive side, many of the bushes produced sweet berries that, right now, were about the only source of food they could find. They picked berries by the handful and saved them in some empty containers still in their backpacks from the lunch Loretta had packed for them a lifetime ago.

By mid afternoon, the rain had become a thick mist that seemed to hang in the air and their clothing was becoming damp and cold. They eventually found a stand of trees similar to the ones they found the night before. They were on a hill and mine subsidence beneath the ground had led to the trees leaning precariously toward the hillside. The result was a thick pine curtain to cover them. Rico particularly liked the location because there was a large clearing nearby that would allow them to put some distance between themselves and the trees if they saw any lightening.

The boys crawled under the branches and sat against the trunk of the tree. Just like the night before, it was pretty comfortable. There were no low branches near the bottom of the tree, so they could sit upright and see out while remaining dry and warm under the tree.

Ryan was very tired and Rico wasn't surprised when the younger boy lay down pillowing his head on his backpack and, without another word, fell asleep. Rico opened his own backpack and removed the beach towel that he had packed in there days ago. He opened the towel and carefully covered Ryan with it. He smiled wryly as he did it knowing that his neat-freak mother would be appalled to see him covering Ryan with the dirty towel. _Oh well_, he thought, _it's all I have right now and you wouldn't want Ryan to get cold, would you, Mom?_

Rico sighed and leaned back against the tree trunk. He suddenly felt so responsible for Ryan and he wasn't sure he liked having all of that responsibility rest on him. He listened as the rain fell harder and harder. Ryan slept and Rico reflected on the last couple of days. He wondered how Mason and Lucy were. Had they found someplace dry to ride out the rain? Would they sleep comfortably tonight? He wondered, too, if Roger and company were still looking for them. According to what Ryan had overheard the night before, the three of them needed to be in Seattle at 4 o'clock to meet the guy with the explosives. It was after 4 o'clock now. Did that mean that they were safe? Or did Roger decide to forego his meeting in order to keep hunting for them? Maybe Roger had a "plan B" and someone else could construct the bombs while he and Peggy and Vernon stayed in the forest. It was too much to think about. He had no control over what Roger or Peggy or Vernon did nor could he take care of Mason and Lucy. All he could do right now was make sure that he and Ryan were as safe as possible and, whether good or bad, everything else would take care of itself.

Mason and Lucy thought that they were seeing a mirage when the old, dilapidated miner's shack came into view. It was small and square with its door hanging by one hinge. There were windows cut into two sides that probably never had any glass in them and the wood panels that the miners used to keep out the wind and rain and snow had long since blown away. Despite that, it looked sturdy enough to keep them sheltered from the rain as long as they stayed away from the windows and the door. Lucy got so excited when she saw it that she broke into a full run toward the door.

"No Lucy!" Mason shouted. "Don't go in! We have to make sure it's safe."

"Why wouldn't it be safe?" Lucy asked. "Do you think it's going to be wetter in there than it is out here?"

"No, of course not. I just want to make sure nothing is living in there."

"News flash, Mason! Bears don't live in houses." Lucy said sarcastically. "Goldilocks was a fairy tale." Lucy had inherited Tony's quick wit and sarcastic sense of humor and managed to display it at the most inopportune times.

"I know that, Lucy, but that doesn't mean that one couldn't have wandered in and decided to stay. They want to be warm and dry just like we do. Besides, something worse than bears could be in there. There might be snakes!" That was cruel and Mason knew it but somehow he just couldn't resist it after Lucy's wisecrack about bears living in houses.

"Mason, don't say that!" Lucy cried. "You don't think there are really any snakes in there, do you?"

"I don't know. Let me look." Mason walked around to the side of the shack and peeked in one of the open windows. The place was dirty; its wood plank floor strewn with pine needles and small branches and its corners thick with spider webs. Lucy wasn't going to like the webs, but she would have to live with it. The place otherwise looked like it offered decent protection. "Looks okay," Mason reported. "I think we can go in."

Lucy pushed back the door as far as possible, which amounted to less than a foot, and then squeezed in between the door and door frame. The floor protested loudly as she stepped on it. She stepped back quickly to take her weight off of that particular spot.

"I'm not sure I'd step there again," Mason suggested.

Lucy stepped lightly to the left where the boards seemed sturdier. They found a relatively clean, dry spot against a wall where they took off their backpacks.

Just a few minutes later, the rain grew from a steady drizzle to a heavy downpour. Lucy, like Ryan, was very tired and dozed as she leaned against the wall. Mason stood staring sadly out the open window, a fine mist of rain spraying his face. He was certain that there was no chance that anyone would rescue them tonight. Who would be searching for them when it was raining this hard?

Mason could hardly stand the thought that they would spend yet another night in the forest. The nights had been bad enough when it wasn't raining but with the rain he didn't think he could stand it. He had also begun to feel very guilty that he and Rico had gotten Ryan and Lucy into this situation. The two of them were the ones who wanted to play "spy". Lucy and Ryan had merely gone along with the game. No, he and Rico were to blame and he suspected that when they got home, _if they got home,_ the punishment would be harsh. _Or maybe_, he thought hopefully, _Mom and Dad will be so happy to see us that they won't bother to punish us._ He rolled his eyes knowing how utterly ridiculous that notion was. No, he would face the music and accept his punishment. It wouldn't be undeserved so why try and fight it. At the moment it really didn't matter what the punishment was as long as the four of them got home.

About the same time that the children were all finding shelter from the rain, Roger, Peggy and Vernon reached the new Warner Enterprises warehouse on West Street in an industrial section of Seattle. Their maps and GPS left at the campsite, the three had to rely on Roger's memory to get to the warehouse. Roger had learned back in his Special Forces days to memorize, and then destroy, maps of target areas. The skill came in handy as they made their way through the lesser traveled streets of Seattle. The rain helped, too. Bad weather was putting a damper on the festivities in the downtown area. There was less traffic, both automobile and pedestrian, than Roger had expected which, in his mind, was a bonus.

While he walked, Roger rearranged their timetable in his mind. They would still reach the warehouse in time to meet the munitions expert at 4 o'clock. After that he would leave Peggy and Vernon to help with the bomb construction while he checked out the festival. That should take him three or four hours. After that he would meet the group at the warehouse and they could pack up the truck to take the newly constructed bombs into the center of town. Once everyone was gone, which should be early on a rainy day like this, they would plant each of the devices. Roger's goal was to be back in the warehouse no later than 2 o'clock in the morning. Before leaving the warehouse for the last time, they would set explosives on timers to blow up the building at the same time the next afternoon as the bombs would go off at the festival.

Roger easily picked the lock on the rear entrance of the warehouse and entered with his gun drawn. He spent the first couple of minutes inside making sure that the building was deserted. Once he was satisfied that it was, he holstered his weapon and allowed himself to relax. Peggy stood near the door watching for the truck with the explosives to arrive.

It was a few minutes after four when Peggy caught sight of the unmarked, white box truck backing up to the loading dock. A red haired man matching the description Roger had given her looked back and forth to make sure no one was watching and then exited the truck. "He's here," she told Roger.

Roger moved toward the door and Peggy stepped aside. Roger looked out and verified that the man on the other side was Larry Fitzgerald, or at least that was the name he was currently using. He opened the door before Fitzgerald could knock. Fitzgerald looked surprised to see Roger.

"I thought you were supposed to be at the festival deciding on the best locations to place the devices," he said. His reference to the bombs as "devices" made their plan seem so much less sinister.

"Yeah, well there was a glitch. Let's unload and then I'll head out to the festival. I should be back by 8 o'clock."

"Is this a glitch that I need to worry about?" Fitzgerald asked.

"No, it's nothing that I can't handle. It just slowed us down," Roger told him. He leaned back into the warehouse and made a beckoning gesture toward Vernon and Peggy. "Get out here! We need help unloading."

The four of them proceeded to unload the truck and move all of the supplies into the warehouse. Soon, Fitzgerald was busy showing Vernon and Peggy what he needed them to do and Roger was heading off in the driving rain for the festival.

Roger returned as promised at 8 o'clock soaking wet, but with detailed plans of where each bomb would be placed. Besides bombing the main stage where Japanese dancers would be performing at 4 o'clock tomorrow, Roger had selected a combination of the largest booths and some smaller ones located nearest the main street exits. That way, he would achieve a maximum number of casualties in the explosions and block egress to people trying to escape the inferno.

The rain seemed to slow down a bit around 9 o'clock as they loaded the truck and Larry drove them out of the industrial area and into the business district. They slowly cruised the streets around the closed festival and by 10 o'clock decided that it was safe to park in an alley near the main stage and get started setting the charges. Roger, Peggy and Vernon were undeniably tired after having searched the forest for the children the night before and the work took longer than planned in the dark, rainy night. It was nearly 3:30 in the morning before they finally finished and made their way back to the warehouse and still their work was not finished. Charges still had to be set to blow up the warehouse, but that part was easy and was completed a half hour later.

They helped Larry Fitzgerald load the rest of his gear into his truck. Roger told Peggy and Vernon to go inside the warehouse and find somewhere to sleep while he completed his transaction with Fitzgerald. Peggy breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that they were finally finished and could rest. She looked back as Roger handed a fat envelope to Larry. She smiled as the warehouse door closed behind her knowing that they would get their pay off tomorrow night.

"You need any more help?" Fitzgerald asked Roger after he had taken a moment to count the money and make sure it was all there.

"I can take care of everything from here," Roger assured him.

"You know how to set the timers, right?"

Roger nodded. "I've done that before. Don't worry about it. Just get yourself as far from Seattle as possible by the time those bombs start going off."

Fitzgerald smiled; the $150,000 that Roger just handed him would cover his tracks and take him thousands of miles away. "Let me know the next time you need my help," Fitzgerald told him. "You know how to get in touch with me."

Roger said nothing; he simply nodded. His face was illuminated by a streetlight but it revealed nothing that Fitzgerald could read. Roger was always like that. Fitzgerald never knew whether the man was pleased with his work or not, but every few years, he got a call and each time, Roger was willing to pay top dollar to have a job done.

Roger stood in silence watching as Fitzgerald drove away and disappeared around a corner. He inhaled the night air. It was cool and clear now that the rain had finally stopped. After checking the street one final time, Roger walked purposefully back to the rear entrance of the warehouse. As he did, he pulled his gun from its holster and reached into his pocket to retrieve the silencer. He mated the two as he walked quietly through the door, the gun safely hidden behind his back.

Vernon heard Roger's footsteps behind him. "Is Fitzgerald gone?" he asked as he turned toward Roger.

Roger didn't way a word. He raised his right hand, aimed and fired before Vernon knew what was happening. Even with a silencer, the sound of the gunshot reverberated in the empty warehouse. Peggy was several feet away with her back turned but the noise behind her made her jump.

"What was…" she started. Before she could finish, Roger had aimed again and fired. The shot caught her right at the base of the throat. She was gasping for breath as she dropped to the floor.

"Sorry, Peggy," Roger said without emotion. "I kind of liked you, but I couldn't trust you to keep your mouth shut." He fired again, this time into her chest at point blank range. Peggy stopped gasping and her body relaxed; her blue eyes staring, unfocused. Roger turned his attention back to Vernon. The large man appeared to be dead but Roger couldn't take a chance. He put his gun against Vernon's temple and pulled the trigger. Satisfied that the two were dead, he knelt next to Peggy's body and checked her pockets to make sure she wasn't carrying any identification or anything that could link her to him. From her front left hand pocket he pulled a room key for a cheap motel about a half mile away. They had passed the motel on their way into town and Roger had Peggy go in and rent a room. Their conversation swirled in his head. He remembered handing her the cash to pay for it.

"One room, one night. Got it?"

"Why can't we git two rooms?" Vernon asked angrily. "I ain't sharin' my wife with nobody."

"Think about this, Vernon, or is that too much to ask?" Roger retorted. "Peggy is going to walk in there dripping wet, alone, with no suitcase and you don't think it's suspicious that she would ask for two rooms? This place expects all kinds of vagrants and they don't ask a lot of questions as long as you pay upfront but two rooms is going to raise someone's suspicion."

Peggy did as she was told and within five minutes she came out of the lobby with the room key. Now Roger was going to take the key and head back to the motel. All he could think about was a hot shower and a decent night's sleep. He quickly checked Vernon's pockets, set the timers on the charges and left the building.

Twenty minutes later Roger opened the door to the motel room. The room was musty and had a dank feel to it, but it was better than sleeping outside again tonight. He stripped off his still damp clothing and hung them over furniture to dry. The bathroom smelled of mildew, but at the moment he didn't care. He hadn't had a shower in days and at least the motel had hot water. He lathered from head to toe and then stepped out to dry on a scratchy white towel.

As he dried off, he walked back out into the bedroom and turned on the ancient television set. He manually changed the channel (there was no remote control) and stopped at a 24 hour news channel. Roger sat on the bed and threw the towel over his wet head and started to dry his hair. He half listened to the anchor woman reading the news:

"_Local police agencies report that today's bad weather hampered their efforts to find four missing Seattle children." _

Roger pulled the towel away from his face to watch. Pictures of the four children appeared on the screen.

"_This was the third day rescuers spent in a heavily wooded area east of a Seattle suburb looking for the children. Two of the children, 10 year-old Mason Bauer and his 7 year-old brother Ryan, are the sons of Warner Enterprises Chairman and CEO Katherine Warner Bauer and her husband, Jack Bauer. Mrs. Bauer is the daughter of Warner Enterprises founder Bob Warner."_

Roger watched as the news station played file footage of Kate Bauer walking hand-in-hand with her husband at some black tie charity event.

"Well, well, well, Jack Bauer," Roger said to the empty room. "As I live and breath!" Roger hadn't seen Jack in over 25 years since the two of them trained together in the Special Forces. Although he looked older, Jack's appearance hadn't changed much over the years. He was still blond and handsome and solidly built. Roger took note of the smile on Jack's face. He hadn't smiled much during his Special Forces training, none of them had. It irritated Roger to see that Jack was happy. "You old son of a bitch! You always did have the most beautiful girls interested in you while the ugly old coots like me were stuck with what was left. This time, not only is she beautiful, she's rich, too. I've been a working stiff all my life and it looks like you made your money the old fashioned way: you married into it."

Roger continued to watch the news hoping to get more information, but the news anchor had already moved on to the next story. _What a coincidence,_ Roger thought,_ of all the kids in Seattle, what are the chances that I run into Jack Bauer's kids and come close to killing them? _The thought made Roger cringe a bit. He wasn't afraid of many people but he remembered how ruthless Jack could be when the circumstances warranted and the thought of making an enemy of Jack Bauer genuinely scared him.


	8. Chapter 8

_Hi again and thanks for staying with me. I haven't had a lot of time to write recently so this took me longer than expected. Hope it was worth the wait!_

_I just wanted to clarify something that confused at least one reader. This story is a sequel to Carnival Town, notEscape to Argentina (the sequel to that was called Undercover). In both stories Kate and Jack had 2 sons and their names were Mason and Ryan. I probably shouldn't have done that because it's confusing, but I couldn't think of more perfect names for the kids. Sorry if I confused you!_

_So, here's chapter 8. As always, I want, need, am down on my knees begging, for your reviews! _

Chapter 8

Sunday morning dawned clear and warm with no hint that the previous day had been marred by rain. Rico stretched and looked at his watch. It was after 8 o'clock; he had slept for over 12 hours and he was amazed that he actually felt rested. He sat up and began to think about what he and Ryan should do next when a familiar sound caught his attention. It took a second to process the sound but he quickly realized that it was a helicopter in the distance. Rico scrambled out from under the tree to see if he could see it.

"Ryan! Ryan! Wake up!" he shouted as he ran toward the clearing. "They're here! It's a helicopter. They're coming to rescue us!"

Ryan woke slowly from his deep sleep but soon realized what Rico was shouting about. Within a second or two he was right behind Rico in the clearing looking skyward to see the helicopter. It wasn't in view yet, but the rhythmic sound of the rotors was coming closer.

Lucy and Mason heard it, too. The miner's shack that they were sleeping in was only a couple hundred yards from where Rico and Ryan had been. The two squeezed through the door of the shack and out into the forest to find a spot where they could get a view of the helicopter and, hopefully, be seen.

"There's a clear area not too far away," Mason assured Lucy. "Remember? We saw it yesterday."

Lucy followed Mason for a few steps but realized that she had forgotten her backpack. "Keep going," she called ahead. "I'll meet you there. I need my backpack."

"Lucy, forget it!" Mason called back. "We have to get out in the open so they can see us."

"Go!" Lucy shouted. "I'll be right there." With that she turned and ran toward the shack while Mason started in the opposite direction.

Lucy covered the distance to the shack in less than ten steps. She glanced back to make sure she knew where Mason was going then pushed her way through the door. Her backpack lay against the wall on the other side of the shack. As she started to run across the floor, her foot landed hard on the floorboards that had creaked so loudly the night before. The boards groaned again but this time the groan was followed by the sound of splintering wood.

Mason was running through the woods when he heard Lucy scream. He stopped for a second not sure what to do. He wanted to continue running to somewhere that the helicopter pilot could see him, but Lucy's scream pulled him back. _She probably found a snake,_ he thought. _That's all it is. She went back and there was a snake or a big hairy spider and she screamed. Lucy, if you screamed over some stupid spider and that helicopter misses us, I will never forgive you._

Mason squeeze through the door and stopped dead in his tracks. A large area of the floor had caved in and Lucy was nowhere to be seen. Mason gasped as he looked down into the hole where the floor used to be. It was an old mine shaft and Lucy was lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom just visible in the thin line of sunlight coming in through the door behind him and dimly illumining the hole.

Mason dropped to the floor and put his head over the edge of the hole. "Lucy!" he cried. "Lucy, can you hear me? Lucy, say something!"

Lucy moaned quietly. It sounded a bit like "help me" but Mason couldn't really tell for sure. "Lucy, please, talk to me. Can you hear me?" Lucy moaned again but her responses remained unintelligible. Mason could still hear the hum of the helicopter in the distance. "Lucy, I'm going to go get help. Just lay still and I'll get you some help. We'll get you out of there, I promise."

Mason jumped up and ran out of the shack. He was crying now, tears rapidly streaking his face and he ran blindly toward the sound of the helicopter and the clearing he remembered from the day before. He found the clearing and ran into it shouting and waving wildly just as the helicopter passed over the clearing and back over the tree line. Mason continued running but knew it was no use. He tripped and fell to the ground sobbing.

"Please, come back!" he begged. "Please, come back. Lucy needs help. You have to come back and get her. She'll die without help. Come back! Come back!"

Mason had never been so frightened in his life and he didn't know what to do next. Should he go back to the shack and stay near Lucy? He couldn't help her there, but he could be near by. Maybe it would make her feel better to hear his voice. He could follow the sound of the helicopter and hope that at some point they would spot him. That seemed pretty futile. His other option was to go in search of the rescuers that he knew must be in the woods if the helicopter was over head, but then he was afraid that he might not be able to find his way back to the shack so they could rescue Lucy. No matter what he decided it seemed like it would be the wrong thing. He had heard his father talk about "no win" situations, but he never understood what that meant. Now he knew for sure what it meant because he was in the middle of one.

A few hundred yards away, Rico and Ryan stood in the middle of a large clearing waving and shouting at the helicopter just as Mason had. The helicopter pilot, Andy Fletcher, spotted them easily.

"Base, this is Air 1. Come in Base," he said into his radio. "I've got a visual on two of the kids here in the northwest sector."

All of the rescuers heard the transmission. Jack grabbed his radio. "This is Bauer. What's your location, Air 1? And what is the condition of the children?"

"We're about a two-and-a-half miles west of you, Mr. Bauer," Alan Harmon, a natural resources police officer answered. "The kids are standing up and waving. I can't tell much more from this distance."

"Can you set that bird down?" Wes Grimes asked from the command center.

"Negative, Lieutenant," Fletcher answered. "The clearing is big enough, but there's been a lot of mine subsidence around here and the ground isn't level. I'm going to drop below the tree line and lower Alan in a harness. He can assess the kids and I'll fly further north and see if there is some place close that I can set down. If not, I'll hover here and drop the harness and we'll bring them up one at a time."

"That sounds like a plan," Wes said. "Keep us apprised of any developments."

Seconds later, Alan Harmon was being lowered into the clearing. Ryan and Rico ran toward him as he unhooked his harness and stepped away from it.

"You have to help us! You have to help us!" Ryan shouted over the noise of the helicopter. "They're three people trying to kill us and they plan to blow up the festival downtown and they're going to blow up my mom's new warehouse, too!" Ryan spoke quickly without taking a breath.

"Slow down, young man," Harmon told him. "First I need to know who you are."

"I'm Rico Almeida and this is Ryan Bauer," Rico told him.

"Are you two boys okay or do you need to see a doctor?"

"We're fine," Ryan said, "but there are people after us who want to kill us!"

"We know about the three people, son. You're safe with me," Alan told Ryan. He looked at Rico, "That looks like a nasty cut on your face."

"It's just a deep scratch. I'm okay," Rico assured him.

"Where are the other two kids?" Harmon asked.

"We don't know. We separated yesterday morning to make it harder for those people to find all four of us and kill us," Rico explained.

"So you haven't seen the others since yesterday morning?"

"No, sir. They went in one direction and they went in another."

"Base, this is Harmon. I've got Rico Almeida and Ryan Bauer here. They've got some minor cuts and bruises, but overall I think they're doing well." He explained that the two boys had separated from the others and why. "It sounds like the three people from the campsite did make some attempt to capture or kill the children. Ryan is also telling me that he over heard a conversation by the same people about explosions being set off at the Asian festival and at a warehouse. Has Homeland Security or the FBI warned us about these kinds of terrorist activities?"

"Negative, Harmon. We've not been notified by any of the federal agencies that there are any threats against Seattle. How sure are you that the information is accurate? You're getting it from a 7-year-old boy. They tend to have over active imaginations."

Jack was listening to the conversation on the radio. "Wes, if Ryan is telling the story, you can believe him. I'm not going to guarantee that he got all of the details right, but he's never been good at making up stories. Mason could invent a story like this, but not Ryan. Your best bet is to get both kids back to the house as soon as possible and debrief them."

"Harmon, we'll go with Jack's idea. Let's bring the kids back and see what they can tell us," Grimes said. "Fletcher just called in on another frequency. He landed the chopper about a half mile east north east of your location, Harmon. Take the kids there. He'll fly them back to the Bauer's house and we'll debrief here. Jack, do you and Tony want Fletcher to pick you two up somewhere so you can come back with your boys?"

Jack looked at Tony who shook his head. "Negative, Wes. As long as the boys are alright, we'll stay out here and keep looking for the others." Jack would have loved to go home. Ten years of having an uneven gait had resulted in some arthritis in his hip and along his spine. Hours of rain the day before had made it worse than usual. He desperately needed a long, soak in the Jacuzzi, but that wasn't going to happen until they found Mason and Lucy.

Harmon started through the woods with the two boys who practically ran all the way to the helicopter. They both admitted to being hungry and were thrilled when the pilot produced two granola bars from his pocket, but other than that, they didn't seem to be any worse for the wear. The flight back to the Bauer's house was brief. The pilot landed the helicopter in the clearing that the children had been playing in four days earlier. Kate and Michelle, along with Carmen, Loretta and Bob and Grace Warner, were all waiting for them. Michelle and Kate ran to the helicopter before the rotors even stopped turning. Bob held Carmen back until it was safe for her to be near the helicopter. The two boys literally jumped into their mothers arms both apologizing profusely for causing so much trouble. Neither mother heard a word they said over the thousand kisses they were planting on the boys' faces; they were just happy to have their sons back.

Hugs were exchanged all around and everyone headed back toward the house. Carmen clung to Rico as if he had been missing for weeks. He picked her up and kissed her wondering when she stopped being a pest and started being a cute little sister.

"Now when Lucy and Daddy come home we can be a family again," Carmen said brightly.

Wes Grimes waited impatiently while the boys were checked out by a doctor. Michelle had already made him promise that he would wait until the doctor had seen them and pronounced them fit before he was allowed to debrief them. She agreed that they could debrief while they ate, but they had to see the doctor first.

Wes was grateful that the doctor was quick. The boys were both a little dehydrated and needed to eat, but they were otherwise healthy. They washed up a bit and both dropped into chairs at the kitchen table to eat the mounds of food that Loretta made. With Kate and Michelle close by and Carmen practically in Rico's lap (She had refused to eat her own breakfast earlier, but was now reaching regularly onto Rico's plate to help herself to strips of bacon. Michelle was amazed that Rico was taking it in stride and not complaining that Carmen was annoying him.), Wes and another officer started the debrief. Wes listened skeptically to Ryan's description of how Roger, Peggy and Vernon's planned to wreak havoc at the Asian Heritage Festival and then blow up the warehouse. Despite the fact that he had no intention of believing Ryan when the child started telling his story, by the end Grimes had been drawn in. He was amazed by how grown up the almost 8-year-old sounded when he told the story. Wes questioned him carefully and Ryan repeated the details the same way every time. Wes became convinced that the child was telling the truth.

"Send a unit over to the warehouse. Have an explosives team meet them there. Warn them that the place might be booby trapped to explode on entry. And get a sketch artist over here. I think the kids can give us a good description of the hostiles," he told one of his subordinates. "Set up a real time link so that we know what's going on there at all times. If they find explosives at the warehouse, we need teams ready to evacuate the festival and start looking for bombs. Also get the mayor and the city police commissioner on the phone. I need to bring them up to speed on the situation."

"Lt. Grimes," Ryan started, "when you find those people, what are you going to do to Peggy?"

"I don't know that yet, Ryan. Why do you ask?"

"Peggy was nice to us. She didn't want to kill us. That Roger-guy was making her go along with him. I just don't want you to arrest her or anything," Ryan said pleading his case.

"Ryan, we'll consider all of that before we do anything, but if Peggy is involved with something that might hurt other people, we'll have to arrest her. Let's just wait and see what happens," Wes told him as gently as possible.

Ryan nodded in a very adult way as if this all made perfect sense to him. Wes couldn't help but notice how like Kate he was.

Mason was frantic. Since her fall, Lucy had been unable to talk to him, but each time he called her name she moaned in response. He checked on her every few minutes and in between times, he ran short distances from the shack in various directions and shouted for help. This time, when he lay on the floor with his head down in the gaping hole and called her name, he was met with silence.

"Don't do this to me. Lucy. Talk to me. Say something, anything." The silence was deafening. "Please, Lucy, please!" he begged but his pleas were met with more silence.

Mason ran from the shack shouting fervently for help. He had to attract attention but he didn't know how else to do it. He looked around hoping for an answer when he noticed a rather spindly looking tree nearby. It wasn't nearly as tall as the surrounding trees, nor was it as full, but its many bare branches near the bottom made it a good tree for climbing. He reasoned that if he could climb ten or fifteen feet up, his shouting might be better heard by rescuers. Mason scrambled up the tree ignoring the pine needles that were prickling his skin. He found a reasonable perch that he estimated to be about twelve or fifteen feet up and once again began shouting for help.

Jack and Tony continued to search their assigned section of the grid. They had taken a few minutes and talked to their sons over the radio and now were quiet again. Their relief and elation over finding Rico and Ryan was short lived. Since Rico and Ryan had confirmed that the people from the campsite were pursuing them, they were more worried than ever about Lucy and Mason. On top of that, Jack's back pain was excruciating and he was now slowing them down to a crawl. He told Tony to go on ahead and he would eventually catch up, but Tony refused to get more that a few yards away in case Jack needed help.

They were climbing a particularly steep hill when Tony suddenly stopped. "Did you hear that?" he asked Jack.

"No, what was it?"

"I thought it was a voice, maybe it was just the wind," Tony speculated.

"Tony, there's no wind today," Jack pointed out.

They both stood still and listened. "There it is again," Tony said.

"I heard it that time, but I'm not sure what it was," Jack agreed. "I'm not even sure what direction it's coming from."

"Hello!" Tony shouted. "Hello! Is someone there? Hello!"

He waited for a few moments and got no response. Tony walked several steps in another direction and tried again. Again he got no response. He changed directions once more, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.

They both heard it. There was a definite response to Tony's last call. His heart pounding, Tony called again. Jack and Tony smiled at each other as they heard the response.

"It's that way," Jack pointed. "Go! I'll catch up!"

Tony didn't have to be told twice. He took off at a steady trot through the forest. He continued to call out at regular intervals and each time there was a response. As he got closer he recognized Mason's voice and called back to Jack to tell him.

Mason clung to the tree unable to believe that someone had finally heard him. He continued to shout in response to the voice he heard in the distance hoping that they could follow the sound. The closer the rescuer got, the surer Mason was that it was Tony's voice he was hearing. He scanned the trees hoping to see Tony's figure come into view. As soon as he did, he started down the tree.

"Uncle Tony! Uncle Tony!" he shouted. "Over here!"

Tony watched as Mason swung from a branch and dropped the last six feet to the forest floor below and hit the ground running. If Tony hadn't known better, he would have thought he was watching Jack fifteen years earlier. He had seen Jack make similar moves in pursuit of a suspect.

He reached out trying to catch Mason in his arms and was surprised when Mason didn't stop, but grabbed his arm and pulled him along. "Hey! Hey! Slow down, Buddy!" Tony told him. "Are you okay? Where's Lucy?"

"You have to help her," Mason panted as he dragged Tony toward the miner's shack. "We found a miner's shack and there was a trap door over the mine. The wood around the hinges must have rotted. Lucy fell down the mine shaft!"

"What?" Tony gasped as he picked up the pace. "When did this happen? How far did she fall?" Tony saw the shack in front of him and he pushed through the door. The four-by-four section of missing floor lay almost directly in front of him. He was immediately overcome by a wave of nausea and had to force himself to choke back a mouthful of bile as he looked twenty feet down at his daughter lying lifelessly at the bottom.

Tony turned and grabbed Mason by the shoulders and leaned down so they were looking eye to eye. "How long ago did this happen?"

"I don't know. I guess a couple of hours. I don't have a watch."

"After she fell, was she awake? Could she talk to you?"

"For a while she would moan when I talked to her but I couldn't understand her. A little while ago she stopped making any sounds. Uncle Tony, I'm sorry. I tried to take care of Lucy. I really did. She ran back for her backpack when we heard the helicopter this morning. I tried to stop her, really I did. I'm sorry." Tears streaked his face as he apologized.

"Mason, listen to me. You didn't do anything wrong. You took good care of Lucy. Now I need you to help me. Your dad is right behind me and he has the radio. Go back the way we came and you'll find him. Tell him to radio in for medics and a med-evac helicopter. Got it?"

"Yeah, I can do that," Mason said as he turned and ran through the woods.

Tony dropped his backpack and pulled out a 50 foot length of rope and looked for something to attach it to. Nothing on the structure itself looked sturdy enough to hold his weight, so Tony ran outside and secured the rope to the nearest tree. He pulled hard on it to make sure it would hold him and then ran back into the shack and dropped the free end down into the mine shaft.

"Baby, it's Daddy," he called into the hole. "I'm coming down to help you, Sweetie. Just give me a second." Tony lay down on the floor to spread his weight out and prevent a further cave in, then he grabbed the rope and eased himself down over the edge of the hole in the floor. He carefully worked his way down the rope trying to forget that the last time he tried something like this he was not even thirty, an age that had passed him by more than a few years ago. "I'm coming, Baby," he assured Lucy. Or was he assuring himself, he didn't really know. What he did know was that there was no room for error here. If he slipped and fell he was going to land on top of her and that would likely kill her.

Tony eased himself down onto the dirt floor next to Lucy. He immediately dropped to his knees and kissed her face. It was cool and clammy. "Lucy, sweetheart," he whispered as his voice cracked with emotion. "It's Daddy. Can you hear me, Honey?"

He put is fingertips on her neck to check for a pulse. It was weak and rapid, but she had a pulse. "Thank you, God!" Tony whispered to the air. "Thank you!" He watched her chest rise and fall as she took quick, shallow breaths. She was breathing and her heart was beating. At the moment, he couldn't ask for more.

"Dad! Dad!" Mason shouted as he ran through the woods.

The sight of his son running toward Jack brought tears of joy to his eyes. He was beginning to think this might never happen and yet here was the boy just yards away. And he didn't appear to be hurt, just scraped up and in need of a good bath.

"Mase!" Jack called happily. He stopped walking for a moment and held his arms out to engulf his son. Once he had the boy in his arms, he wasn't sure that he would ever let go. He felt the same flood of relief that had washed over him that night so many years ago when Kim had been kidnapped and he was finally reunited with her at CTU. His relief that night was short lived, and he didn't know it yet, but it was going to be short lived again today. "Are you alright? God! I'm happy to see you. Let me radio your mother."

Mason pulled away immediately. "Dad, you have to call for help. Lucy fell down a mine shaft and she's hurt really bad. She might be dead, I don't know. Uncle Tony said to tell you to call for medics and a med-evac helicopter."

"Slow down! Where is this mine shaft?"

"It's that way," Mason pointed back the way he came. "I'll take you there, but call for help first!"

Jack pulled out his radio while he followed Mason between the trees. "Base, this is Bauer. Come in, Base."

"That's Jack!" Kate cried as she heard Jack's voice over the radio. She jumped up from her chair at the kitchen table next to Ryan, who along with Rico, was regaling their mothers, Bob and Grace, Loretta and Carmen with tales of their adventure in the forest. Kate ran to the dining room command center with everyone else right behind her.

"I copy, Jack," Wes responded. "What have you got for us?"

"I have Mason here with me. Tell Kate that he's fine." Kate smiled broadly and covered her mouth to stifle a sigh of relief. Bob put his arms around his daughter and kissed the top of her head.

"What about Lucy?" Michelle asked. She had grabbed the nearest headset so she could talk directly to Jack.

"Lucy's hurt, Michelle. I don't know the extent of her injuries. Tony ran ahead and he's with her now. He sent Mason to tell me that he needs a paramedic unit and a med-evac helicopter. Did you copy that, Wes?"

"I copy, Jack. I'll have them dispatched immediately. Give me a second, I'm going to patch you through to the medic unit on standby so you can give them an idea what they're facing when they get there."

"Jack, what happened to Lucy? Did the hostiles from the campsite hurt her?" Michelle asked.

"No, Michelle. Mason and Lucy came across an abandoned silver mine. The floor over the mine shaft collapsed and Lucy fell into the mine shaft," Jack paused for a moment. He could hear Michelle gasp and begin to cry on the other end of the radio.

"Wes, make sure the medics have the equipment to lift Lucy out of there."

"I copy, Jack. We'll make sure they have the equipment."

"I just got to the mine," Jack reported. He was silent for a second while he got control of his emotions. What Mason told him simply hadn't prepared him to see Lucy lying like a ragdoll at the bottom of the mine shaft. Tony knelt next to her trying as best he could to assess her condition. He suppressed the urge to cry. Tony and Michelle's children had been nearly as close to him as his own children. He didn't think that he would have hurt much worse if it were one of his children lying there. "Tony, I've got the medics on the radio. What's her condition?" he asked fearing the answer. From this distance he had no way of knowing if she was even alive.

Tony, like Jack, was fighting to keep emotion out of his voice. He had to focus if he was going to help Lucy and he struggled to do it. "Tell them she's unresponsive. She's breathing and has a weak pulse," he reported mechanically. "Her skin is cool and clammy."

Jack repeated Tony's assessment to the medic on the radio and then listened to his instructions. "Tony, is there any blood that you can see?"

"There's some dried blood around her mouth and nose. It looks like she might have had a nosebleed but it stopped. Her lip is cut and there's blood around that, but not much else. Her left arm is in a funny position. I'm sure it's broken and she may have other broken bones, but she doesn't have any other visible injuries. She might be bleeding internally."

Again Jack spoke to the medic and then called down to Tony. "Shine your light in her eyes and see if her pupils react."

Tony did as he was told. "Both pupils react, Jack. Ask them what their ETA is. We need to get her out of here now."

"ETA is just a few minutes, Tony. They going to land the chopper in a clearing not far from here and the team will come in on foot. Just hold tight a little longer and we'll have her out of there," he tried to encourage Tony but knew how hollow his words rang.

The team of paramedics arrived, but extracting Lucy from the mine proved to be both difficult and tedious. The mine shaft was too narrow for three adults, so Tony was hoisted back up to the surface using a harness so that two paramedics would fit in the space. He paced anxiously in front of the shack alternately praying for her recovery and fearing the possibility that she might not.

Emotions at the Bauer house were mixed. The rescue of three of the children without major injury was cause for celebration for the families and for the police agencies but Lucy's condition had the families numb with fear and the police silently chastising themselves for not finding the children sooner. Wes was responsible to calling off the search at sunset the first two nights despite Jack's and Tony's pleas to continue thought the night. He was a father, too, and although he hadn't seen her, but the image of a little girl lying at the bottom of a mine shaft haunted him nonetheless.

At the same time, the police focus had changed. With the rescue operation over, they were now paying attention to the teams that had recently arrived at the warehouse. It wasn't long before the bomb squad confirmed that the door to the facility was rigged to explode. The bomb squad commander, an ex-military explosives expert, knew this bomb was not set by an amateur. It took the squad nearly a half hour to defuse it. Once it was safe the team made their way inside of the vacant warehouse. There they found two types of bombs all set to detonate that afternoon. The first type were strategically placed around the structure to result in an implosion of the structure. The second type were less in number but were highly incendiary and would result in a huge fire. The combination would have resulted in the building being reduced to ash in mere minutes. The fire department would have been unable to stop it regardless of how quickly they responded.

The bomb squad methodically moved from bomb to bomb carefully defusing each device. It wasn't until they reached the far end of the warehouse that they came across the two bodies. Between the bodies rested one of the incendiary bombs. Roger had taken great pains to ensure that no one could ever identify Peggy or Vernon.

The bomb squad commander took one look at the bodies and shook his head. As if he didn't have enough trouble here with a warehouse full of dynamite, now he had a murder on his hands. _Jesus H. Christ, _he thought, _can this possibly get any worse? _He reached for his radio and called Grimes.

Wes listened attentively to the bomb squad commander's description of the bodies. They sounded like they matched the descriptions that Ryan and Rico had given him of two of the hostiles. He, too, shook his head wondering what other bizarre twist this whole thing might take before it was over.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Roger was sleeping soundly when the sirens from the police cars flying by jolted him back to consciousness. He was disoriented at first but quickly remembered where he was and why those sirens should cause him more than a little distress. He jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The room was relatively dark from the heavy blind that covered the window. Roger pulled back the edge of the old, tattered curtain to peek out into the street. The sunlight blinded him for a second and he had to look away. He blinked fast to force his eyes to focus and then looked out again. The police cars weren't stopping at the motel, but they were on their way to toward the warehouse. _Could be a coincidence_, he thought. Seattle was a big city with its fair share of crime. Those cars could be going anywhere. Even if they were going to the warehouse, there was nothing there that could connect him or Larry Fitzgerald to the bombs. The police would chalk it up to some wacko who had a grudge against Warner Enterprises. Surely some disgruntled employee had leveled threats against the industry giant. A company couldn't be that big without having made some people angry over the years.

But still, the police presence in the area was a concern to Roger. He walked away from the window and started to dress while he considered his options. His original plan had been to stay at the motel until the 1 o'clock check out time and then basically stay off of the main streets and in the shadows until he took up his position near the festival at a few minutes before four o'clock. After that he would disappear in the ensuing chaos created by a dozen or so bombs and hundreds of dead and injured people. That plan still seemed sound. There was no reason to panic and change his schedule. Hurriedly changed plans had a tendency to have holes in them and, as close as he was to the completion of this operation and the seven-figure income that would come with it, he couldn't afford to open up any holes. So his plans would stay the same. He would sit tight for a while unless he had any reason to suspect that the police were on to him.

Wes Grimes was doing his best to pack up his men and move them out of the Bauer's house. Jack and Mason had arrived at the house a short time earlier and Kate was busily fussing over the two of them. Wes had taken a few minutes to debrief Mason. His story matched those of Ryan and Rico, so there was no reason to spend a lot of time with him. The Almeida family was all on the way to the hospital. Tony was with Lucy on the med-evac helicopter and Wes arranged to have one of his officers drive Michelle and the other children to the trauma center. With most of the equipment already packed up in a police van, Wes was saying good-bye to Jack and Kate when his cell phone rang.

"Excuse me," he said as he looked at the caller ID. The call was from the homicide division chief, Blake Ferris. "Blake, what's going on? Have you ID'd the bodies?" He and Ferris went back to their police academy days together. They had been beat cops in their youth and had worked their way up the ladder.

"Sorry, Wes. Nothing on the bodies yet. All I can tell you is that their fingerprints match the ones your boys found at that campsite. Whoever they are, their prints aren't on any database. We even checked Interpol and they don't show up anywhere. Either they've managed to evade detection in the past or they're amateurs and the deal blew up in their faces. I tend to believe it's the latter. Anyway, what I'm really interested in is a print that we found on one of the timing devices. Prints from the two bodies are all over the bombs and the timers, but we haven't been able to lift any other useful prints until my guys came up with this one. It's a partial but it's a good one and it matches a partial from the campsite."

"The campsite was full of prints from two of the people," Wes agreed, "but there was only one or two partials from the third guy. If we can ID that guy, I'll bet dollars to donuts that we have our shooter. The third person here is clearly a professional."

"Well, I think we've got him and, you're right, he's a professional. The print we got here was a match to a former military guy with Special Forces training. His name is Roger Bassler. I've got old military ID photos of him. Can you see if any of the kids you rescued recognizes him? The pictures are close to 25 years old, but I'm hoping that he hasn't changed too much for them to recognize."

"Send it to my palm," Wes told him. "I'll have the kids take a look at it. I'll get back to you in a few minutes."

"Have they got something, Wes?" Jack asked him.

"They might," Wes told Jack hopefully. "The homicide guys were able to match a print at the warehouse to one of the partials from the campsite. We're hoping your sons can identify the guy from an old military picture."

"Military?" Jack asked. "Is he special forces?"

"Looks like he was. Ferris is sending me a picture and a profile," Wes said as he pulled out his palm. "Here it is," he said as he looked at the grainy picture in front of him. "Not a great picture, but it should be enough for the kids to give us a positive ID."

"Wait a minute," Jack said taking the handheld computer from Wes' hand. "Let me see that." Jack walked to his desk and picked up his glasses. He smiled at Wes, "Getting old, I guess," he said indicating the reading glasses. He focused again on the image in front of him. "I know this guy. Last name started with a 'B'. Bessent? Bessman? Something like that."

"Bassler. Roger Bassler," Wes said. "You know him?"

Jack nodded. "That's it. Bassler. We did our special forces training together."

"Do you keep in touch with him?"

Jack shook his head. "I haven't seen him in well over 20 years. We trained together and were on a couple of early missions with our unit. Bassler couldn't get along with our commanding officer, Sam Wiley. It started during training and then escalated during the missions. Roger was smart. Intelligence and covert operations were almost second nature to him, but he didn't want to take orders, he wanted to give them. Our second mission didn't go as planned. Roger had orders to abort and get out but he ignored them and initiated his own plan. In the end we successfully hit our target, but Roger's plan put four of us in danger. We were barely extracted. One of the guys ended up getting hurt so badly that he was given a medical discharge. Wiley went on a crusade to have Bassler dishonorably discharged. He ended up with a reprimand and he was transferred to another unit. I don't know what happened to him after that."

"How much did he know about explosives?"

"Like the rest of us, enough to get by. He could have gotten some additional training in munitions later. I don't know. I finished my tour and then came home. I had a wife and a young daughter back in LA. I didn't have any plans on making the army my career. When did Bassler leave the army? Was he honorably discharged?"

"From what I've got here, he was honorably discharged in 1998. It looks like he got into a few more scuffles over the years. It doesn't say it in so many words, but it looks like they gave him the option of taking the discharge or facing some charges. For a career guy like Bassler, that would have been a tough choice."

Jack nodded in agreement. "What has he been doing since then?"

"That's a good question. He applied and was rejected by both the Secret Service and NYPD based on his military record. It looks like he worked as a personal body guard for a few years and as a private detective. All of that was in New York City. The interesting thing is that about 2006, the guy just seems to disappear. He has no employment record, no known address, no current driver's license, no IRS records, nothing."

"Sounds like Roger doesn't want to be found."

"I think you're right," Wes agreed. "Would you be willing to have your sons take a look at this picture and see if they recognize Bassler?"

"Sure," Jack said. He called the boys into the room. "Guys, take a look at this picture and see if the man looks familiar."

"That looks like Roger," Mason said immediately. "His hair is kind of gray now but it could be him when he was younger."

"That's him alright," Ryan agreed. "His face is a little fatter now, but otherwise he looks the same."

"Did you catch him?" Mason asked Grimes.

"Not yet, son, but now that we know who he is, it'll be easier to catch up with him," Wes said to Mason.

Tony was anxiously pacing in front of the trauma room doors when Michelle arrived with the children. Carmen spotted her father first, dropped Michelle's hand and took off running.

"Daddy! Daddy!" she cried as she ran down the hall. "Daddy, I've missed you so much. Where's Lucy?"

Tony enveloped his youngest child in his arms and squeezed his eyes shut to hold back the tears that were threatening to fall like rain. He kissed her soft cheek repeatedly.

"Daddy, your beard is scratchy," Carmen told him as she rubbed his cheek which was covered with a three day growth of beard.

"Did that hurt? I'm sorry, Pumpkin," he told her as he kissed her again. "I'm just so happy to see you."

"Where's Lucy?" Carmen asked again.

By then Rico was only an arm's length from his father. Tony shifted Carmen to his left hip and reached for Rico with his right arm. He wrapped his arm around his son's shoulders and pulled him close as he buried his face in Rico's curly hair.

"Ric, thank God you're okay," Tony whispered.

"Dad, I'm sorry," Rico apologized sincerely. "This is all my fault. If Mason and I hadn't been playing 'spy' none of this would have happened. The police wouldn't have had to search for us and you and Mom wouldn't have had to worry and Lucy wouldn't have gotten hurt. You told us not to play 'spy' and we didn't listen. I'm sorry. I know this is my fault."

Tony kissed him again. "Ric, I'm not going to tell you that your mother and I aren't upset about you guys disobeying us, because that would be a lie. Right now, we're just grateful that you're safe and Lucy's getting the care she needs. Sometimes in life lessons are learned the hard way and you learned this time in about the hardest way possible. Let's put it behind us. You've been punished enough. Now we have to focus our attention on Lucy and getting her through this crisis. That's what families do; they pull together in a crisis."

Rico nodded. His father's quiet, gentle reprimand while hugging him was probably worse than a physical beating. He wished his father would have yelled at him or blame him for everything, as he was blaming himself. That would have been easier to understand and to accept.

Tony released his grip on Rico and set Carmen on the floor. He reached out for Michelle who was standing a foot away trying hard to contain her tears. He pulled her into his arms. One hand slid up along her back to her neck as he drew her face against his chest.

Oh, Tony," Michelle whispered as torrent of tears flooded her face.

"I know, Baby," he whispered through his own tears to let her know that he was as scared and tired as she. "But we're together now. We can get through this, Baby, I promise."

Carmen stepped forward and reached out to hug her parents' legs not wanting to be left out of this family reunion. Rico put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"Give them some time together," he whispered into Carmen's ear. Carmen looked up at Rico and pouted as he took her hand and led her into an empty waiting room. "Where are your books? I'll read you a story," he offered. "Let's sit over there." He pointed to an uncomfortable looking vinyl covered sofa in the corner of the room. Rico specifically chose that piece of furniture because sitting there would put the most distance possible between he and Carmen and their parents. Like any boy his age, Rico didn't understand the relationship between his parents. They were always happy when they were together and Rico liked to watch them and listen to their banter. His father could turn anything into a joke and his mother would roll her eyes and smile; that always made his father laugh. Occasionally he would catch them sharing a private moment. Nothing overly intimate: a kiss, a whispered exchange, a shoulder massage. Rico understood that those moments belonged to them and he always tried to make himself scarce when they occurred. He knew right away that this was one of those "private moments." His parents needed to be together without he or Carmen interrupting them.

Rico and Carmen sat on the sofa and Carmen opened her backpack on her lap. The first thing she pulled from it was her favorite stuffed animal. It was a soft, huggable elephant that Kate and Jack had given her for her second birthday. She had dragged the poor elephant around by his trunk ever since. He was well loved and well worn. You could often find him wearing a diaper and covered with a baby blanket tucked into her baby doll crib. She nonchalantly slipped him under her arm and continued digging through the backpack as if the elephant wasn't even there. Rico had been teasing her about "Mr. Snuggles" for ages and she hoped that if she acted like the animal wasn't important that Rico would leaver her alone. She didn't feel like being teased right now.

Rico didn't bother to tease her. He watched the doorway while Carmen looked for just the right book to read. His parents were now talking to a tall man wearing a long white coat with his name embroidered in red above the left breast pocket. Rico knew they were talking about Lucy. The man, who Rico assumed was a doctor, did most of the talking. Tony and Michelle listened and nodded. Occasionally one of them said something. None of them looked very happy. He watched his mother's eyes. Her eyes were so expressive. They usually danced merrily but now they were sullen. She stared intently at this man who was nearly a head taller than Tony. Rico noticed that his parents' hands were clasped, fingers entwined. They stood close together as if their closeness created some kind of magical power that could overcome all odds.

Their conversation came to an end and Tony walked into the waiting room. "Ric, do us a favor and sit here with Carmen for a few minutes. Your mom and I are going back to see Lucy."

Carmen jumped from the sofa. "Can I go, Daddy? Can I, please? I want to see Lucy, too."

Tony knelt on the floor so he could be eye to eye with his little daughter. "I know you do, Carmen, but the doctor said that just Mommy and I could see her right now."

"When can I see her?" Carmen queried.

"Maybe later, Honey," Tony said evasively. "The doctor is going to take her for an operation. She's bleeding somewhere in her tummy and they don't know where."

"Is it just a little bleeding, Dad?" Rico asked hopefully. "Or is it really bad?"

Tony looked down at the floor and studied the worn carpet for a moment. "It's pretty bad. She's losing a lot of blood. They have to find the source of the bleeding and stop it soon."

"I'll watch Carmen," Rico told Tony in his most grown-up and responsible voice. He stood up and walked over to Carmen, then took her hand and led her back to the sofa. "You and Mom go see Lucy. Tell her we love her."

Tony smiled a little at Rico and Carmen, who was now silently sucking her left thumb. (She generally preferred her right, but Rico was holding her right hand.) "I'll tell her that," he whispered.

Carmen and Rico watched Tony disappear with Michelle and the doctor behind the door that the doctor had come out of just a few minutes earlier. Neither said a word and Rico found the silence unnerving. "Here, Carmen. Let's read 'Madeline'," he suggested as he pulled Carmen's favorite book from her backpack.

"No!" Carmen said as she took the book from Rico. "I don't want to read 'Madeline'," she told him in no uncertain terms. She quickly buried the book at the bottom of her backpack and pulled out "Rainbow Fish."

"I thought 'Madeline' was your favorite," Rico said taking the proffered book from her.

"It used to be. Now I like 'Rainbow Fish'," she said as she crossed her arms in front of her chest for emphasis.

"Why don't you like 'Madeline' any more?"

"Cause Madeline's appendix hurts and she has to get an operation just like Lucy. And she has to stay in the hospital and she has a big scar."

"But the doctor made Madeline all better, remember? And the scar wasn't a big deal. All the other girls thought it was cool," Rico reminded her.

Carmen looked down and paged through her book. "Rico, is the doctor going to make Lucy all better?"

Rico wasn't sure of the answer to that question nor was he sure how much to say in front of Carmen. "He's going to try," he told her noncommittally.

"What happens if he can't? Mommy and Daddy looked really scared. Daddy was even crying and Daddy never cries. I'm scared, too. I want Mommy and Daddy and I want to see Lucy," With that Carmen dumped her backpack and Mr. Snuggles onto the floor and jumped from the sofa. She ran toward the door that she had seen her parents go through.

"No, Carmen!" Rico cried as he ran after her. He caught up with her just short of the door and pulled her away. "You can't go in there. You heard Dad. Just he and Mom can go back. We have to wait."

"I don't want to wait, Rico," Carmen sobbed. Rico knelt down and put his arms around Carmen. She rested her head on his shoulder and tears traced long paths down her face. "I'm scared Lucy might not get better and I'll never see her again."

In her own simple way, Carmen just voiced every one of Rico's fears as well. His bravado now gone, the ten-year-old who had been so strong for the last few days dissolved into tears.

Michelle and Tony followed the doctor into the trauma room and now stood together next to Lucy's bed. They felt helpless. One of their beloved children was lying before them unconscious and clinging to life with the help of medications and a ventilator and all they could do was hold her hand and tell her that they loved her. It was nearly unbearable.

The doctor had been kind to them, but he was brutally honest. Lucy was badly injured. She had severe internal bleeding along with a concussion, a broken left wrist and arm and a fractured pelvis and left leg. Her left lung had been punctured by broken ribs and he suspected that her spleen was ruptured and would have to be removed. They would worry about the orthopedic injuries later, if the bleeding wasn't stopped soon, she would die. She had been given blood and fluids and they still couldn't keep her blood pressure from bottoming out. They had finally resorted to drugs to keep her blood pressure up enough to get her to surgery. The doctor's eyes were sad as he told them that he would do everything he could to keep their daughter alive but he wasn't sure that it would be enough.

"Mr. and Mrs. Almeida, we have to take her now," said the nurse who had walked into the room without their even noticing.

"Oh, just another minute, please," Michelle begged as she tightened her grip on Lucy's hand.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," the nurse said gently. "The doctor is scrubbed and waiting for her. We really need to get started. She's losing a lot of blood and her blood pressure is starting to fall again. Kiss her goodbye and tell her that you'll be waiting for her when she gets back," she directed them.

Tony and Michelle did as they were told and watched tearfully as Lucy was wheeled away from them. Michelle turned and sobbed painfully in Tony's arms as the child was pushed through the operating room doors and out of their sight. Her knees were barely holding her and Tony was providing more than a little support. Tony wished more than anything that he could offer his wife some comfort at that moment but found that he simply couldn't; he was too frightened and upset to do anything but hold her and let her cry.

Jack was just about to lay down for a well deserved nap on his favorite sofa. He had spent the last hour in the hot tub and his hip and back were feeling much better. He was still limping, but the muscles were beginning to relax and his pain was significantly reduced. The phone rang and Loretta answered. Jack hoped that it was Tony or Michelle with an update on Lucy. All of the Bauers were on pins and needles but Mason was just about beside himself. Despite the fact that every adult, including Tony and Michelle, had told him that Lucy's accident was not his fault, he was taking it hard. Jack could see so much of himself in Mason. How many years had he blamed himself for Teri's death? He smiled ruefully at the thought. In point of fact, he had never stopped blaming himself. The passage of years had made it easier to live with, but especially when he was with Kim, who had long since absolved him of any fault in her mother's death, he still felt the pangs of guilt and suspected that he always would. He didn't want Mason to be haunted with the same kind of guilt and he prayed that Lucy would make a full recovery.

"Hold on, Mr. Beck. Let me get Mrs. Bauer for you," Loretta said into the phone. She walked into the study where Jack was sitting and cupped her hand over the phone. "Where's Mrs. Bauer?"

"She's in the shower. When she's finished, she's planning to go over to the hospital and sit with the Almeidas."

"Her warehouse manager, Amos Beck, is on the phone for her. Shall I tell him she'll call him back?"

"No, I'll talk to him," Jack offered as he reached for the phone. Kate had called Amos earlier in the day and asked him to be the company's representative at the warehouse while the police were present. "Amos, it's Jack. Kate's busy right now. What can I do for you? Is there a problem at the warehouse?"

"Not anything big, Jack. The police are still here and they need someone from Warner Enterprises here until they finish. My wife just called me and she really needs me at home. I tried to get hold of Harry, my assistant manager, and he's not home. And I've called a couple of my senior people, but I can't get in touch with anyone. I wasn't sure who else Kate would want me to call."

"So it's just a matter of babysitting the warehouse while the police are there, right?"

"That's it, Jack. It's not rocket science, but I need someone I can trust."

"Not a problem, Amos. I'll drive over. I can hang around until the police finish. It'll take me about 45 minutes to get over there. Can you wait that long?"

"Sure, Jack. I wouldn't ask, but my mother-in-law is sick again and my wife went over to take care of her. The kids can be home alone for a little while, but you know boys, give 'em an hour and they'll take apart the house unless they kill each other first!"

Jack laughed. "Yeah, boys will be boys."

"By the way, I'm happy your boys got home safe. Everybody was worried about them."

"Thanks, Amos. I'll see you in a little while," Jack said as he hung up the phone.

"Dad, was that Uncle Tony? How's Lucy?" Mason asked as he ran into his father's study.

"Sorry, son," Jack said putting his hand on Mason's shoulder. "We haven't heard anything from the Almeidas yet." Jack started walking toward the master bedroom. Mason followed him.

"I wish they'd call. Maybe you could call them," he suggested.

Jack stopped and turned to his son. "When they know anything, they'll call. For now, just sit tight. I know this is hard, Mason, but right now we can't do anything for Lucy."

Kate exited the bedroom and walked down the hall. "Who was on the phone, Jack?" she asked him. "Was it Tony and Michelle?"

"No, it was Amos. The police are still going over the warehouse for evidence and they need a company representative to be there. Amos has to go home. I told him that I'd go over there and stay until the police are finished."

"Jack, why don't you stay home and get some rest. I'm sure I can find someone else to go over there."

"Honey, by the time you call a couple of people and finally find someone who can go over, I could already be there. In fact, I could drop you off at the hospital first and then I'll go over to the warehouse. That way we don't have two cars downtown. Before he left Wes said that downtown traffic is a mess since they had to evacuate the Asian Heritage Festival."

"What about the boys? They can't stay home alone," Kate reminded him.

"I'll ask Loretta to stay with them. I'm sure she'll be fine with that."

Mason and Ryan, who were both down the hall a short distance, had been listening to every word. "Dad, can we go to the warehouse with you?" Ryan asked.

Mason chimed in, "Yeah, Dad, can we? Please. That would be so cool to watch the crime scene team finding evidence. Just like on TV!"

"Oh, I don't think so, boys," Kate said shaking her head. "The police don't need you guys getting in their way."

"We won't be in the way, Mom. We promise," Mason told her. "Please take us, Dad, please."

"Kate, I think it's fine for them to go with me. I'll keep them out of the way."

Kate looked at Jack like he was crazy. "Jack, two people were murdered there. The boys don't need to see that."

"Honey, the bodies are gone. The coroner's office took them about an hour ago. I'll keep them out of that section of the warehouse."

The boys exchanged disappointed looks at each other. Seeing the bodies was the whole reason they both wanted to go to the warehouse. Yes, it was creepy, but none of their friends had ever seen a freshly murdered corpse and it would be a great story to tell their buddies. Besides that, although they both felt bad that Peggy had been murdered, both of them felt like Vernon got what he deserved and neither of them was sorry when they found out. If they couldn't see the bodies, at least they hoped to see blood and brains all over the floor. Now it sounded as if their father wasn't going to let them see that either. They both started to fear that this might just turn out to be boring after all.

"Well, if you think it's alright, Jack. I guess it's okay with me." Kate looked at her watch. It was ten minutes to two. "Give me a couple more minutes and I'll be ready to go," Kate told him as she returned to the bedroom to grab a jacket and purse.

It was almost two o'clock when the four of them got into Kate's sleek black Mercedes and headed for downtown Seattle. Jack was at the wheel with Kate in the front seat beside him. The two boys sat silently in the back seat trying to figure out how they could make this trip fun.

Jack drove Kate directly to the hospital and pulled up in the traffic circle in front of the main entrance. He leaned over to kiss her. "Call me if there's any news," he told her.

"I will," she said kissing him back. "Boys," she said leaning into the back seat, "be good for your father. Stay out of the police officers' way."

"They'll be fine, Kate. When we're finished at the warehouse, we'll come back over here. Maybe by then the doctors will have good news for us."

"I hope so," Kate said with a smile. "I'll see you in a couple of hours." She blew kisses to the boys in the back seat and made her way through the automatic doors and into the hospital.

Jack glanced into the back seat before driving off and took note of the morose looks on his sons' faces. "Mom took all the fun out of going to the warehouse didn't she?" he asked with a smile.

"Yeah," Mason agreed. "We wanted to see the bodies. Are they really gone or did you just tell Mom that?"

"Yes, the bodies are gone. I don't lie to your mother, Mason," Jack said somewhat sternly. He made a left turn toward the industrial section of town. "Even if the bodies were still there I don't think seeing them would be the best thing for you. This isn't like the movies, guys, this is real life. But," he added, "I think there will still be plenty of interesting things for you to see."

Jack made several more turns to try and avoid the traffic that was coming out of the city with the evacuation of the festival. Mason and Ryan stared out the tinted windows and watched the scenery change. They went from the skyscraper office buildings in midtown to lower rise buildings near the edge of the business district to one and two story warehouses and businesses in the industrial district. The streets around this section of town just looked mean. The buildings were built for function not for good looks. They were cold and uninviting structures with little glass in them to let in the sunlight. An occasional hotel or mom-and-pop store or fast food restaurant dotted the blocks.

Jack slowed for a traffic light just a few blocks from the warehouse. Mason watched as a man exited a motel room not far off the street. He looked both ways and then walked across the parking lot and to the sidewalk. The Mercedes slipped past him down the street and he started to cross toward an alley on the other side. Mason gasped. He pushed the button the seat belt to free himself so that he could turn and see the man through the rear window.

"Mase, sit down!" Jack directed him. "What are you doing?"

"Dad, that's him! That's Roger!"


	10. Chapter 10

_Here it is; the last chapter! I've written longer stories, but I think I've worked harder on this one than any one I've ever written. Thanks to those of you who have been reading and especially to those of you who have reviewed. _

_Hope you enjoy the rest of the story!_

Chapter 10

Roger exited the _Blue Moon Motor Lodge_ into a warm, welcoming Seattle. It was a beautiful day and things were going more or less according to plan. Roger was getting a later start out of the motel than planned, but that didn't really matter. If he had gone at 1 o'clock he would have just had to find someplace to hide out until it was time to set off the bombs. Instead he had spent the last hour and a half working off some pent up energy.

It started when he was getting ready to leave his room and drop off the key at the motel office. As he stepped outside, the door to the next room opened. He was on edge, of course, after hearing the police sirens earlier in the day and the door opening startled him.

"Did I scare you?" said a soft, sexy voice through the partially open door. "Sorry, I didn't mean to," she said. The woman opened the door a little wider to reveal a soft, sexy body to match the voice.

Roger smiled at her. He had been listening to her and a man who clearly had gotten his money's worth for several hours last night. Roger had actually caught sight of her earlier in the day when he was peering out the window to check for any police presence. At that moment she was apparently saying goodbye to lover boy who was probably only about 18 or 19 and looked heart broken that she was making him leave. It was kind of amusing actually, as if the kid didn't understand that he had just paid for love and this red-head-out-of-a-bottle wanted him to get out so she could get some rest and be ready for "work" again this evening. Roger decided to help her out.

"Hey, son," he said as he cracked open the door, "didn't you hear the police cars a little while ago? I'd get the hell out of here if I were you unless you feel like calling your mom to bail you out of jail."

The kid looked like he had just been hit with a ton of bricks. "What? I, ah, no, I better go. Bye, Carly. Hope I see you again," he said nervously as he trotted to the parking lot.

"Thanks," she said.

"No problem," Roger answered as he went back into his room.

Now here he was just inches away from the woman. She had showered since Roger saw her less than an hour ago. Her hair was wet and hung to her shoulders. He thought it was an improvement over the teased style she had been sporting when he first saw her. She was wrapped in a red and black lacy robe that covered little. Roger looked closely at her. She was younger than he had thought earlier – maybe 20 at the most, but she carried herself like a woman who had been doing this for a while now.

"Thanks for getting rid of that guy earlier. I owe you," she said seductively.

Roger raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Oh, really? What's it worth?" he asked her.

"Oh, well, let's see. I could let my fingers do the walking. That's normally a $35 charge."

Roger smiled again. The girl he used regularly in New York didn't let her fingers do the walking for less than $200. Of course her fingers tended to do the flamenco but that was another story. "So what would, oh let's say, $250 buy me?"

The girl's eyes bulged. "Two hundred and fifty? Are we talking American dollars here, Buddy?"

Roger opened his wallet and counted out five $50 bills and handed them to her. "So what does it get me?"

"A couple of nights in this part of town," she said as she took the bills and checked to make sure they were real. This was more money than she made in a night and since it wasn't set up by her pimp, she didn't have to give him any of it. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"I don't have a couple of nights, but I do have a couple of hours so let's not waste any time," Roger told her.

They slipped back into the room. Roger's standards were high; he paid for the best in New York City, but this girl wasn't bad. She was young and he found that very exciting; so exciting, in fact, that he had come three times. Now, as he left the motel, he was relaxed but still attentive to the task at hand. By tonight, his Swiss bank account would be significantly larger.

Roger walked across the parking lot very aware of his surroundings. He stopped on the sidewalk and waited for a car to pass before he crossed the street. The black Mercedes was slowing for the light at the end of the block. Roger looked at the car. It was hard to miss: a top-of-the-line Mercedes sedan in black and polished to a high shine. Its tinted windows hid the driver and any passengers. This was a strange place for a car that expensive. Most people didn't bring a Mercedes into this end of town. Maybe the driver was lost.

Roger crossed the street glancing periodically at the Mercedes. He made his way into the alley and walked to the end of the first building and looked around the corner. The Mercedes was clearly visible on the street running parallel to the alley. It had turned the corner and its speed had slowed as if the occupants were looking for something, _looking for him._ Roger tried to banish that thought. Who would be coming after him in a Mercedes? No police department or government agency, including the CIA, used Mercedes as their staff cars. _This is ridiculous, _he thought. _I'm getting paranoid. The driver is lost and he slowed down to use his GPS or to call someone and get directions. I need to keep moving._

Jack turned the corner and eased his Mercedes down Cherry Tree Lane, an improbable name for a street in this section of town. There wasn't a cherry tree within miles of the location. "Mason, are you sure about this?" he asked his son.

"Dad, I've been running from that guy for the last two days. I know what he looks like. I'll never forget him," he added softly.

Jack took out his phone and called Wes Grimes. "Wes, it's Jack. I'm on Cherry Tree Lane just south of West Road. Mason just saw a man he believes is Roger Bassler crossing the street and going into an alley."

"Did you see him?"

"Not really. I saw someone leaving _The Blue Moon_ and crossing the street, but I was paying attention to the traffic."

"Alright, I'll send in the cavalry," Wes told him.

"I'd do it quietly. This guy knows covert operations. If he gets a whiff of the police, he'll go underground and you'll never see him again."

"Got it. Now you get those kids the hell out of there. I have to believe that Bassler is armed and he's not going down without a fight."

"I'll head over to the warehouse. That should be safely out of the line of fire."

Jack hung up and threw the phone on the passenger seat. He leaned across the front seat and opened the glove compartment. From there he pulled out his gun and made sure that it was loaded and ready. With the safety on, he reached behind his back and pushed it into the waistband of his pants.

"Dad!" Ryan exclaimed his eyes widening with excitement, "You keep a gun in the glove compartment?"

"Not normally. I just don't like this section of town so I wanted to be sure that I had some protection."

"Are the police coming, or are you going to have to take Roger out yourself?" Mason asked excitedly. This was an adventure that he was happy he hadn't missed.

"I'm going to let the police handle this. Roger isn't someone I want to play with. He's smart and he's got Special Forces training."

"So do you, Dad," Mason reminded him.

"I know, but I'm not in the mood to use it right now. We're going to the warehouse and let the professionals handle this."

Jack turned right at the corner to make a block. He wanted to keep an eye out for Roger but didn't plan to spend any unnecessary time in the area. Jack, Mason and Ryan all took a long look down the alley as Jack passed it; they could see no one.

Roger stood in the shadow of a building near the end of the alley when the Mercedes passed. As it went by he caught sight of the vanity license plate and he knew immediately who was following him. The tag read: K8 B. Kate B. So the car belonged to Kate Bauer, but Roger knew that she wasn't driving it. Even through the heavily tinted windows he knew that the driver was a man; Jack was driving. As the car passed, Roger stepped out of the shadows and watched it slide effortlessly to the end of the block and make a right. Roger ran back down the alley at full speed to see which way the car turned. As he expected, the driver made another right to complete the block. Roger knelt next to a building at the end of the alley and pulled out his gun. He raised and steadied it and waited for the Mercedes to come past the alley. As it did, he aimed carefully and pulled the trigger. The passenger's side front window shattered and the car skidded into a newspaper box and over the curb.

It all happened so fast. Pain seared through Jack's right shoulder as he cried out. He hunched forward and clutched his right arm with his left hand. He could feel blood oozing through the hole in his jacket.

"Dad! Dad!" the boys cried as they leaned over the front seat. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"Get down! Lay down between the seats, both of you! Don't move!" Jack tried to put the car in reverse and get away. His reactions were slowed by pain and by the time his hand was on the gearshift, he heard a loud tap on the window. Jack knew without looking that Roger Bassler was standing there. He looked up to confirm his suspicions.

Roger stepped to the rear, driver's side door and tapped on the window with his gun. "Unlock the door, Jack," he said calmly as he readied the gun to fire. "Unlock the door or I shoot the kids."

Jack knew he had no choice. He popped the lock and Bassler leaned into the car. He grabbed Mason by the neck of his shirt. "You, climb over into the front seat."

Mason was shaking from head to toe but quickly found his voice. "I'm not old enough to sit in the front," he told Roger smartly.

"Oh, a smart ass like your old man. Get in the front seat, kid, or you'll never be old enough to sit in the front seat." Roger pushed him roughly over the seat. Mason's knee accidentally bumped Jack's shoulder and Jack gritted his teeth to avoid crying out again. "And give me that phone." Roger pointed toward the phone on the passenger seat. Mason looked at his father questioningly. Jack nodded to him so the boy reluctantly handed the phone over to Roger who took the phone in his free hand, turned it off and put it in his pocket.

"Now, munchkin," Roger said as he pulled Ryan into a sitting position and wrapped his arm around the boy. "You and I are going to hang out back here while your dad drives me out of town." Roger put the gun to Ryan's head; the boy whimpered and started to cry.

"It's okay, Ryan," Jack said in the calmest voice he could muster. "I'll do what he says and you'll be fine, Buddy. Okay, just sit still."

"That's right, Jack. You know what I'm capable of. Put the car back in gear and make a left at the corner."

Jack did as he was told and turned north. He knew where they were going. A major artery out of town was just a couple of miles away. Less than ten miles out of the city, the highway became very deserted. It would be a perfect spot for Roger to kill the three of them and dump their bodies.

"So, Jack, are you surprised to see me? You've come up in the world. I thought I was doing well for myself, but this," he indicated the expensive car, "this is pretty impressive. Marrying into a Fortune 500 company, now that was a stroke of genius. What happened to your high school sweetheart? When we were training together back in the '80s you were married to some southern California sweetie. I guess you dumped her low class ass when little Miss Fortune 500 came along. Smooth, Jack, real smooth."

"Teri was murdered, you son of a bitch," Jack spat angrily. "She was killed by a mercenary just like you who didn't give a damn about a cause, she just wanted to collect a paycheck. At least when you were in the Army you cared about a cause, Roger. Now you just sell yourself to the highest bidder. Well you lost this time. Whoever you're working for won't be paying you now that the bombing isn't going to happen." Jack looked in the rear view mirror. Roger tried to hide his surprise, but Jack could see the subtle change in his eyes. "That's right, Roger. The festival has been evacuated and the bomb squad is dismantling the bombs. There's no way for you to get back and set them off. Everything you invested in this job was a waste and now the authorities know who they're looking for. You'll never be safe again. The FBI, the CIA, Interpol, they'll all be looking for you. No matter where you are in the world, you'll always be looking over your shoulder wondering where they are."

"Keep driving, Jack. I really don't need any of your self-righteous bullshit. You always did have high ideals. Everything was black and white, good or bad. There's a lot of gray out there, Jack, if you would just be willing to see it. Now shut up and drive."

Jack glanced over at Mason who sat trembling in the seat next to him. Anger that his children were being put through this ordeal seized him. He needed a plan. He needed to find a way to get the boys safely away from Roger Bassler. His mind raced as he tried to ignore the pain in his arm and think of a way to save his sons.

Tony impatiently paced the floor of the waiting area outside of the operating room. "Tony, please sit down," Michelle begged him. "The doctor said it was going to be at least a couple of hours."

"I know," Tony acknowledged, "I just can't sit still." He reached out for her hand. The two of them were alone. Kate had taken the children to the snack bar to get something to eat.

Michelle stood and wrapped her arms around Tony. "I don't think I've ever been this scared."

"I have," he told her. "It was when you were exposed to the virus and I thought you were going to die. I felt helpless, just like I feel right now. I was terrified of losing you, Michelle and I'm just as terrified of losing Lucy."

"I don't know how I can go on if she dies, Tony."

"Don't even say it, Michelle. I can't even think about it right now." He kissed her forehead and they stood holding each other and swaying slightly back and forth.

"Any news?" Kate asked gently as she walked back into the waiting room with Rico and Carmen.

"Nothing yet," Michelle said as she wiped tears from her face. Carmen handed her the drink that they brought back for her. Michelle took it in one hand while she stroked Carmen's face with the other. "Thank you, Sweetie," she whispered.

"Have you heard anything from Jack?" Tony asked Kate.

"No, I thought I would have heard something by now. I tried to call him while we were downstairs, but his cell is turned off. Jack doesn't usually turn his cell off. I hope everything's okay."

"I'm sure they're fine, Kate," Tony said but at the same time found it odd that Jack would turn his phone off. He had worked with Jack in one capacity or another for over 15 years and couldn't think of many instances when Jack "went dark," as they referred to it at CTU, without letting someone know.

It was just about then that Kate's phone rang. "There he is," she said as she took the phone from her purse. She looked at the caller ID. "Wait a minute, that's not Jack. Hello," she said into the phone.

"Mrs. Bauer, this is Wes Grimes."

"Hello, Lieutenant. What can I do for you?"

"I was trying to get in touch with Jack but his phone is turned off. I was hoping he was with you."

"No, he dropped me off at the university medical center. Jack and the boys should be at the warehouse."

"I know they should be at the warehouse, but they haven't gotten there. Jack called me about a half hour ago and said that he was a couple of blocks from the warehouse and one of the boys spotted Roger Bassler. I told him to go to the warehouse and we would take care of Bassler. Now I have people all over the neighborhood and there is no sign of Bassler and Jack hasn't reached the warehouse. I wondered if you knew where he went."

"No, I haven't heard from him. I tried to call him just a couple of minutes ago and his phone went to voice mail. Do you think he tried to capture Bassler on his own?" Kate asked incredulously.

"I can't image that he would have tried that with the kids in the car. Jack has done some risky things in his career, but I can't imagine that he would intentionally put your children at risk. I'm going to put an APB out for him and for the boys just to be on the safe side. What kind of car was Jack driving?"

"It's a black Mercedes sedan with a vanity tag, K 8 B. Let me know as soon as you find them, Lieutenant."

"I will. Likewise, if you hear from Jack, have him call me immediately."

"Of course," Kate answered, but Grimes was already gone.

"Kate, is everything alright?" Tony asked her.

"I don't know," she answered truthfully. "Jack and the boys never got to the warehouse and Wes Grimes can't get a hold of them. They spotted Roger Bassler not far from the warehouse. I don't know what to think, Tony, but I'm worried."

Jack eased the car onto the exit ramp that led to the highway. He knew once he was on the highway out of town that his options for getting himself and his sons safely away from Roger were limited. He glanced down at his arm. The arm of his jacket was stained crimson from his shoulder all the way down to his elbow and his fingers were weak and tingling. The bullet missed the artery, but must have hit a large vein for the wound to be bleeding so profusely.

Mason followed his father's gaze. "You're bleeding a lot, Dad."

"Ah, it's nothing, kid," Roger said from the backseat. "I've seen your father in worse shape than this."

"As I recall that was your fault, too," Jack said remembering the mission that had gone so wrong because of Roger's refusal to follow orders. "I also recall that it was a long time ago. Your body responds better to injury when you're twenty." Jack swiped his hand across his forehead as if wiping away perspiration. He had an idea. He needed to make Roger think he was having a heart attack. He reached his hand over to the armrest and pushed the button for the automatic window lowering it about three inches.

"What the hell are you doing, Jack?" Roger asked. "Put the window up."

"I need some air," Jack said. "I'm sweating. It's stuffy in here."

"A ride this expensive doesn't have air conditioning? Put on the air conditioning."

"It's on my right and, at the moment my right hand is out of commission, thanks to you."

"Put up the window, now! Kid, you put on the air conditioning," Roger told Mason.

Mason looked nervously at Jack who told him how to turn on the air conditioning. "Good job," Jack said in a soft voice. "Just sit tight, son, you'll be fine."

For the next mile or two, everyone was silent. Jack spoke first. "Mase, turn up the air conditioning," he coughed and wiped his brow again. When he was sure everyone's attention was on him, he coughed again, harder this time, and pressed his hand against his chest. A pained expression crossed his face.

"Dad, are you alright? You don't look so good," Mason asked.

"I'm okay," Jack answered hoarsely. "Just sit back and stay quiet." Jack hated scaring his children this way but it was the only way he could think of to ensure their safety.

By now they had passed all of the exit ramps that led to the city and the traffic had thinned to almost nothing. Jack made sure that the lanes near him were clear and then began coughing again. He hunched over groaning in pain and swerved into the right hand lane and onto the shoulder of the road.

"Dad!" Mason screamed as the car lurched to the right. Ryan was crying in the back seat.

Jack sat up a bit and got the car under control. "I'm alright," he said gasping for breath and wiping his brow yet again.

"Look, Jack, I don't know what game you're playing, but just keep driving."

Jack clutched his chest and leaned in toward the steering wheel. He knew he was taking a huge risk. He was going to stage an accident and he would have to hope that something unforeseen, such as Roger's gun going off, didn't happen. At this point it was the only chance they had.

"Can't breathe," Jack gasped. Again the car swerved, this time to the left and apparently out of control. It made a 180 degree turn and skidded broadside into the left hand guard rail facing in the wrong direction. Jack slumped onto the front seat with his left hand behind his back. He managed to get his hand around the gun in the waistband of his pants. He forced himself to keep his eyes closed and his face expressionless as he listened to both of his sons calling his name. _At least they're not hurt_, he thought with relief.

"Dad! Dad!" Mason called. Jack's head had landed in Mason's lap and the child cradled it tenderly. "Dad, please wake up," he begged through his tears.

Roger, who had not been belted in, had been thrown across the back seat. He quickly regained his composure and sat up. "Get on the floor," he pointed the gun at Ryan. "On the floor, now! You," he shouted as Mason. "Climb over the seat and lay on the floor with your brother."

"But… but, my dad needs help," Mason cried.

"You can't help your father. Get in the back seat and you can save yourself."

Mason released his seatbelt and eased himself out from under his father. Jack remained motionless. As Mason climbed over the seat, Roger got out of the back seat and opened the front door. At that moment Jack pulled the gun from behind him and aimed it at Roger's chest. "Drop the gun," he shouted. "Drop it now or I will shoot."

Roger ignored Jack's warning and started to raise the gun. Jack fired off two shots in quick succession. His aim with his left hand wasn't great, but it was good enough to put two bullets into Bassler's upper chest and knock him backwards and onto the pavement.

"Stay down," Jack ordered his sons as he sat up and jumped out of the car. Roger was lying on the pavement alive, but in pain and gasping for breath.

"Good shot, Jack," he panted. His gun was still in his right hand.

"Let go of the gun," Jack told him as he pointed his own gun down at Bassler's chest. His voice shook with rage. "Let go of the gun and move your hand away from it. Once you do, I'll call for help. You aren't hurt that badly. If you get to a hospital soon, you'll be fine."

"Yeah, right," Roger gasped still clutching the gun. "Fine and in prison. Don't think so, Jack." He rolled quickly to his left to face Jack and raised the gun. Jack calmly fired two more shots into Roger's chest. The gun clattered to the pavement and Jack kicked it away before he checked Roger's neck for a pulse. There was none.

Jack heaved a sigh of relief and at the same time remembered his sons huddled in the back seat of the car. He pulled open the door and dropped onto the seat. "Guys, it's over. You're okay. Come here."

The two boys nearly leapt into his arms. He clutched them to his chest despite the throbbing pain in his right shoulder and he smothered their faces with kisses. "Is Roger dead?" Ryan asked.

"Yes, he can't hurt you any more, son," Jack told him as he kissed Ryan's blond hair.

"Dad, I was so scared. I thought you were dead," Mason said tearfully.

"I know. I'm sorry. I hated doing that to you guys, but it was the only way I knew to save us. I'm sorry," Jack whispered still holding both boys tightly. He was crying with them realizing how close he had come to losing them.

Jack shared several minutes with his sons before he decided that it was time to call Wes Grimes. He retrieved his phone from Roger's pocket and made the call. It was just a few minutes before Wes had several police cars and an ambulance on the scene. Wes arrived just as they were loading Jack into the ambulance.

"Jesus, Jack! I told you to let us handle Bassler. What were you thinking?" Wes asked incredulously.

"Believe me, Wes. It wasn't my idea to tangle with the guy. He fired the first shot."

"Have you called your wife? I talked to her a little while ago and she was worried about you. Tell me what it is that woman sees in you!"

"I haven't called her. How about if you do it for me?"

"And tell her you got shot? Not a chance, Buddy. You can dial the phone with your left hand. You call her. I'll tell you what. I'll take your sons in my car and we'll follow the ambulance to the hospital."

"Some pal you are," Jack said sarcastically. He took out his phone and called Kate's cell. "Hi, Sweetheart, any word on Lucy?" he asked innocently.

"No, nothing yet, Jack. Where have you been? Lt. Grimes called me looking for you and I couldn't get a hold of you. Where have you been hiding? Why was your cell phone turned off?"

"It's a long story, Kate. The boys and I are going to meet you at the hospital and we'll explain it then."

"Okay, I'll be in the 5th floor waiting room," Kate told him. "When you get off of the elevator, take a right. It's half-way down the hall."

"Actually, it would be easier if you just met us at the emergency room entrance," Jack said as casually as you can say something like that.

"The emergency room entrance! Jack, what's going on? Are you three alright?"

"Don't worry. The boys are fine, Kate."

"Okay, the boys are fine. What about you?"

"It's nothing, Kate. I'm talking to you, aren't I? Look, I've got to go, Honey. I'll see you in a few minutes. I love you, Kate."

"Jack, don't you dare hang up! You are the most exasperating man in the world! Jack? Jack?" Kate listened to the silence on the other end of the phone. "Damn it, Jack!"

Kate took the five flights of steps down to the emergency room. She could have waited for the elevator, but by taking the steps she burned off some of the energy that was fueling her anger and anxiety. She had been standing just outside of the emergency room door for seven or eight minutes when an ambulance roared up to the entrance followed by a police car complete with lights and siren.

Ryan and Mason saw Kate and, as soon as the car came to a stop, bolted from the car and into Kate's arms. "Mom! Mom!" the both shouted.

"You should have been there," said Ryan.

"Dad was so quick. Roger never had a chance and Dad was even shooting left handed," Mason told her.

"Shooting! You father shot someone? Where is your father?" Kate asked. The two boys turned toward the ambulance without saying a work. Kate watched as the gurney Jack was lying on was lowered onto the pavement. "Oh, my God! Jack!" Kate exclaimed as she ran to him. "Sweetheart, what happened? Are you going to be alright? The boys said there was shooting. Did you get hit?" Tears were already streaking her face.

Jack reached out with his left hand and pulled her close. "It's okay, Baby, calm down. I'll be fine," he said tenderly as he pressed a kiss into her temple. "I got hit in the shoulder. The important thing is that the kids are safe and we're together. Don't cry, Honey."

Kate lifted her face from Jack's chest so she could look at him. He smiled at her and wiped away tears with his thumb. Kate smiled weakly back at him and shook her head. "Jack, you've got to stop stepping in front of bullets," she whispered through a voice filled with emotion. "One of them is going to kill you."

"Hey, I thought I was doing pretty well," he teased. "It's been ten years since I was last shot."

"Jack, what am I going to do with you?" Kate asked both laughing and crying at the same time.

Jack pulled her back down against his chest and kissed the top of her head. "Kate Warner, I told you not to fall in love with me and you wouldn't listen." Now his voice was filled with emotion as well.

Kate looked up at him. "It's Kate Bauer," she said putting the emphasis on "Bauer". "And you are the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you so much, Jack."

"I love you, too, Baby," Jack said as he kissed her softly.

"Mr. Bauer, we need to get you into the emergency room," one of the medics said.

Jack kissed Kate again. "Take the boys to the waiting room and I'll have the doctor come out and talk to you."

Kate nodded and closed her eyes tightly to try and stem the flow of tears. She took a couple of deep breaths and turned to the boys. "I guess you guys have one heck of a story. Let's go to the waiting room and you can tell me what happened while the doctors take care of your father." She took Ryan's hand and put her arms around Mason's shoulders and the three went inside together.

Tony had finally settled on a sofa in the waiting room with Carmen on his lap. Her head against his chest, she listened to the constant, rhythmic beating of his heart. The last few days of little sleep and the intense emotions of the last few hours had finally caught up with him; he was exhausted. His head rested against the wall behind him and his eyes were closed.

"Mr. and Mrs. Almeida," said a nurse in green scrubs. Tony and Michelle both sat up like a shot.

"Yes," Michelle said anxiously. "How's our daughter. Is she out of surgery?"

"I wanted you to know that they just brought her into the recovery room about two minutes ago. Dr. Yeager will be out to talk to you in a few minutes," the nurse said before disappearing behind the door almost as quickly as she had appeared.

"Is Lucy alright?" Carmen asked Tony.

"We don't know yet, Sweetie. We have to wait and talk to the doctor," Tony told her.

The minutes ticked by more slowly than any of them could imagine. Finally, the doctor that Tony and Michelle had talked to earlier stepped through the double doors and into the room. Carmen jumped from Tony's lap and ran to him.

"Are you the doctor who operated on my sister, Lucy?" she asked him as she tugged on his hand.

Like most people Paul Yeager was immediately taken by Carmen's beautiful eyes. He knelt down on one knee to talk to her. "That's right," he said.

"Did you take out her appendix?"

He smiled at her. "No, Honey, her appendix was fine. Let's go over here with your parents and I'll tell you how everything went." Still holding his hand, Carmen brought the doctor to where the rest of the family sat.

"Dr. Yeager, how is Lucy?" Tony asked.

"She held up better through the surgery than I thought she would. She lost a lot of blood, but we didn't have any trouble stopping it and I didn't even have to remove her spleen. Don't get me wrong, she's still very sick and a lot could still happen. We still have to worry about infection and some other problems, but overall, the surgery went well and I was pleased by how stable she was. She'll be transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit in a little while. You'll be able to spend some time with her then."

"So is Lucy going to be okay or not?" Carmen asked bluntly not understanding all that the doctor just said.

He smiled at her again. "I think so, but I can't say absolutely for sure," he told her.

The nurse, who had come into the waiting room earlier, stepped into the room again. "Dr. Yeager," she said. "Dr. Nolan from the emergency room is on the phone for you. Are you the trauma surgeon on call tonight?"

"Yeah, I'm on call until noon tomorrow."

"Then she has a patient she wants you to see. It's a fifty year old male with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. He's stable, but she was hoping you could see him within the next ten minutes or so."

"Tell her I'll be right down," he said to the nurse. Then he turned back to Tony and Michelle. "If you don't have any questions for me, I need to get down to the emergency room. I'll stop by to see Lucy a little later this evening."

They thanked the doctor and watched him leave. Tony and Michelle were allowed to see Lucy for a few minutes in the recovery room. Rico and Carmen sat in the waiting room knowing that Kate should be back with Jack, Ryan and Mason at any time. She had gone downstairs to meet them about a half hour earlier. Fifteen minutes later when Tony and Michelle were coming out of the recovery room, Kate and the boys were finally walking into the waiting room.

"Aunt Kate! Aunt Kate!" Carmen cried as she ran to Kate who scooped her up into her arms. "Lucy's going to be okay!"

"Really! Is that what the doctor said?" Kate asked as she hugged Carmen.

"She's going to be fine!" Mason exclaimed. The relief in his voice was audible.

"I think you'd call the doctor's mood 'cautiously optimistic'. She came through the surgery well, but she has a long way to go," Michelle said. "Where's Jack?"

"Yeah," Carmen said. "Where's Uncle Jack? I wanted to tell him about Lucy."

"Uncle Jack will be very happy to hear about Lucy," Kate told Carmen.

"So where is he?" she asked again.

"Carmen," Kate said smiling as she dropped into a chair with Carmen still in her arms. "It's a long story. You know Uncle Jack; life's always an adventure when he's around!"

_I really had trouble with the last few lines. Let me know what you think about the ending. Please, please PLEASE review! It just takes a second and it makes me soooo happy!_

_Want to find out what happens to the Bauer and Almeida families? Read Carnival Town. (Actually, if you just read the last 2 chapters, they will tell you everything that happens for the forty years after Mason is born.) By the way, I've also gotten some reviews for Carnival Town. Thanks to you who have read and reviewed that as well. If you've read Carnival Town and haven't reviewed it, do me a HUGE favor and submit a quick review. It is up to 98 reviews and I would LOVE to see it hit 100. (Okay, I'm shamelessly begging and I know it but do me a favor and indulge me!) _

_Thanks again to all of you for reading this. I had so much fun writing it. I'm a little short of ideas for new stories at the moment. So if you don't hear from me for a while, that's why. I'm sure some ideas will pop into my head when the season 5 starts in January! _


	11. Epilogue

_Thought I was finished, didn't you? So did I! I really had no intention of writing this, but a review from twentyfourrocks suggested that I write an epilogue set shortly after the end of the story. I thought it over and this is what I came up with. Let me know how you like it. If it isn't well received, I can always delete it and let the story end as I originally wrote it._

Epilogue

"Okay, Mason, blow out the candles," Kate directed as the loud, off-key chorus of "Happy Birthday" ended.

Mason drew a deep breath and blew out the eleven candles that illuminated the chocolate cake. Everyone clapped and the children all called for the next piece as Kate cut the cake and served the first piece to Mason.

December 31st was one of the best days of the year in the Bauer household. In many ways it was even better than Christmas. While Christmas was a quiet celebration filled with family and presents, New Years Eve was one big party. Not only did they celebrate the New Year, but it was Mason's birthday, and wedding anniversaries for both Jack and Kate as well as Kate's father Bob and his wife Grace.

The parties started early. Bob and Grace celebrated their anniversary by hosting a breakfast around 9 o'clock for all of their family and friends at their home on Puget Sound. The party lost steam around 1 o'clock and it was time to get ready for the next one. By four, guests were filtering in for cocktails and appetizers to celebrate Jack and Kate's anniversary. Finally, around 7 o'clock Mason's friends came to celebrate his birthday. By 9:30 the friends were gone and all that was left was the family: Bob and Grace, Jack and Kate and their sons and the Almeida's, who were just considered part of the family. Most years Kim and Chase and their children were there, but they had decided to celebrate with Chase's family this year.

The exhausted parents agreed to let the children stay up until midnight but they had to get into their pajamas and be ready for bed right after ringing in the New Year. Even Carmen was staying up this year and she couldn't have been more excited. She had never been allowed to stay up before and the other children teased her about it. This year she made up her mind that she was going to stay up. She thought up all of the important reasons that she should be allowed to stay up and put them together into a speech that she had rehearsed in front of her dolls and teddy bears for days. That morning as she got dressed she presented the idea to her mother.

"Mother," she said in her most adult voice, "I'd like to stay up 'til midnight tonight."

"Oh, Carmen, you're too little to stay up that late. You'll be exhausted by then."

"I can sleep in tomorrow morning," she told Michelle. She was proud of herself for anticipating her mother's answer.

"I don't know, Carmen. Lucy and Rico didn't stay up until midnight before they were six. You're only four."

"But I'm closer to five than I am to four," she told Michelle. "And, I did stop sucking my thumb this year. Daddy says that makes me a big girl. Big girls get to stay up until midnight."

The four-year-old was rapidly wearing Michelle down and it wasn't even 8 o'clock in the morning. "I'm not sure about this. I'll tell you what. Daddy is in his den; go ask him. If he says 'yes' then it's okay with me."

"Okay," Carmen said brightly. _This is easy,_ she thought. Tony was a push over and she knew it. All she had to do was bat her eyelashes a little bit and he couldn't resist her.

Michelle smiled as Carmen left the room. _There's nothing Tony hates more than tired, cranky kids. He won't agree to this in a million years, _she thought.

Carmen made her way happily into the den where Tony was sitting at his desk reading the morning paper. "Hi, Dad," she said again trying to sound very adult.

"Hi, Sweetie," he said glancing in her direction.

"I'd like to talk with you for a minute, Dad," she said. _Oh, this is going well. I sound very grown up,_ she thought.

Tony frowned slightly. This was definitely unusual behavior for Carmen. She never said things like 'I'd like to talk to you for a minute, Dad.' He thought for a moment before responding. "Come up on my lap and we'll talk," he said as he reached for her.

Carmen stepped back out of his reach. "That's okay, I'll just stand here." Sitting on his lap didn't seem very grown up to Carmen.

"Okay," said Tony trying to play along. "If you prefer to stand, that's fine." He sat back in his chair looking very serious.

"Dad," she started, "I would like to stay up until midnight tonight."

"Oh," Tony said with a smile. "Is that what this is all about? Honey, you're too little to stay up until midnight."

Carmen was undaunted. "I'm not little anymore. I'm almost five and I don't suck my thumb. I've been a very good girl this year, even Santa Claus said so, and I think it's time that I stay up with the rest of the family."

Tony practically bit a gash in his cheek to keep from laughing. "You put up a strong argument," he said running a finger thoughtfully across his lower lip. "Let me take this under consideration and discuss it with your mother and we'll get back to you in an hour. Would that be satisfactory?"

Carmen looked utterly confused. She had no idea what he just said, but she was sure that he hadn't said "no" and that was good. "What time is it now?" she asked.

Tony pointed to the clock on his desk. "It's 8:05. When the little hand gets up here to 9 and the big hand is on the 5 just like it is now, that will be one hour. You'll have your answer by then."

Carmen considered the offer for a moment. It seemed the best she was going to get and her dad was a lot harder to negotiate with than she had expected. She had even batted her eyelashes at him and he hadn't budged. Batting her eyelashes always got her more dessert and usually worked when she wanted another story before bed. This was serious stuff if he wasn't succumbing to batting eyelashes. "I'll see you then," she said and strode off to find the other kids.

After a brief discussion with Michelle, Tony called Carmen into his den. "Carmen," he said in a businesslike tone. "Your mother and I have discussed your request and we've decided that you may stay up until midnight. If you fall asleep before that, we aren't waking you up. We'll just put you in bed for the night. That's our final offer."

"Oh, Daddy! Thank you," squealed Carmen suddenly forgetting the grown up persona she was affecting. "You're the best," she said as she kissed his cheek. "I'll be really good and I won't fall asleep for a minute."

Tony smiled as Carmen dashed from the room to tell Rico and Lucy. _She won't make it past 8:30 let alone stay awake until midnight,_ he thought with amusement. His smile vanished quickly as Rico and Lucy came into the room with a chorus of complaints.

"We never got to stay up until midnight when we were her age!" Lucy exclaimed.

"Yeah, why does she get preferential treatment?" Rico demanded.

"Carmen made a deal. If she falls asleep before midnight, that's it. I'll put her in bed. If she can stay awake, then apparently she's old enough to stay up that late," Tony explained.

"You never offered us that deal," Rico complained.

"And you never asked," Tony countered. "Look, Carmen took the initiative to come in here and ask the question. She had a decent argument in her favor. Your mom and I discussed it and we agreed that she could stay up under certain conditions. She agreed to our conditions. Discussion over. Now get ready. We have to leave for Bob and Grace's house in a few minutes. We've got a lot of partying to do today."

The day passed at the speed of light and nearly 15 hours later the Bauer and Almeida families were glued to the television to watch the count down to the New Year. They had just eaten Mason's birthday cake and now they were going to ring in the New Year. Tony and Michelle were amazed to see Carmen wide eyed and perched on Rico's lap for her first New Year's Eve celebration. Kate poured sparkling grape juice into champagne glasses for the children while Jack poured real champagne for the adults. They finished just in time to count down the last 10 seconds of what had been an extremely eventful year.

"Ten!"

"Nine!"

"Eight!" the children shouted.

"Seven!"

"Six!" They were all on our feet now and huddled near the television.

"Five!"

"Four!" By now the adults had joined in, too.

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One!"

"Happy New Year!" everyone shouted as they emptied champagne glasses and began exchanging hugs all around.

The adults shared kisses with their spouses while the five children were jumping up and down and high-fiving all around.

"Happy New Year, Sweetheart," Tony said to Michelle.

"Happy New Year," she said in return. "Let's hope this one is better than the last."

"Amen to that," Tony agreed. "I love you, Michelle."

"I love you, too," she returned with a smile.

Their children were now crowded around them. Tony and Michelle took time to hug each one individually and extend the New Year's greeting.

Tony hugged Rico first. He felt as though his son had grown a head taller this year both physically and emotionally. He was still a fun-loving, jovial boy, but he seemed to take life more seriously and he was more likely to take on responsibility. Both Tony and Michelle sensed the change in their oldest child and were both sad to see him leaving his childhood behind and, at the same time, happy to see him growing up so nicely.

Lucy found her father's arms next. Tony pulled her to him more tightly than he had in New Year's past. He was grateful that this New Year would include her because for at least a few days during the last year that hadn't been assured. She spent almost four weeks in the hospital and had endured a second surgery to stop bleeding and to drain an abscess. She also needed surgery on her broken wrist and leg. Once she came home from the hospital, she continued with physical therapy and had to be tutored at home for a few weeks. She finally was able to go back to school around the first of November. The progress she had made in the last few weeks amazed Tony and Michelle. She had regained strength and mobility so well that the doctor had cleared her to join an indoor soccer league in January. Tony tried not to coddle her. He knew she was fully recovered but the scared parent in him couldn't help but worry about her just a little more than he had before. Just that morning when they were leaving the house he had pulled her scarf higher up around her chin to protect her from the cold. It was a habit that he was going to have to break but for the moment he hugged her just a little tighter and thanked God once again that she was here, in his arms, at this moment.

Michelle was holding Carmen when Tony finally let go of Lucy. He took his youngest child in his arms. Although he loved watching Rico and Lucy grow up, Tony hated to see another year pass knowing that with it Carmen would grow a year older as well. Something about her innocence touched his heartstrings like no child he had ever met. She had been robbed of some of that innocence, but what remained was sincere and precious.

"Happy New Year, Daddy!" she said as she kissed him.

"Happy New Year, Sweetie," he said in return. "Did you like staying up until midnight?"

"It was great. I can't wait to do it next year. I'm not even a little bit tired," she told him as she tried desperately to stifle a yawn.

"Oh, you're not? Well, I'm sorry. The deal was that you have to go to bed right after midnight. Make sure you've said 'Happy New Year' to everyone then I'll tuck you in bed. Deal?"

"I guess," Carmen said as Tony put her down on the floor.

Just a few feet away Jack and Kate had spent the first few moments of the New Year going through the very same ritual as Tony and Michelle had. First they shared a kiss and wished each other a Happy New Year.

"This year, Jack, can you promise me that you'll avoid any situation that could end up with you getting shot?" Kate asked with an amused smile on her face.

"Kate, you take all of the fun out of a perfectly good year," he teased back. He could joke about it now, but getting shot back in August had really unnerved him for a while. For years when he was in the Army and with CTU, being in the middle of a gunfight was all in a day's work. Now that he had restarted his life as a businessman with a new family, the incident had been more traumatic than he would have imagined. He was able to work through it but had spent more than a few sleepless nights considering how close he had come to dying.

Mason and Ryan crowded in and put their arms around their parents as they both shouted, "Group hug!"

Jack and Kate laughed as they put their arms around their sons. Kate looked at Mason who stood next to Jack. He was a full head shorter than his father, but looked exactly like him. His hair, his eyes, the shape of his face, Mason was Jack through and through. He had Jack's love for adventure, but the events of the August past had changed his attitude toward his father's previous career. Being a spy no longer held the excitement it once had now that he had seen first hand that the results could be deadly. A few weeks after the incident, Jack started noticing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder in both Mason and Ryan. Having suffered silently through the same condition after his mission in Kosovo, Jack was well versed on the symptoms. He and Kate immediately put the boys in counseling and were relieved to see that the condition resolved after a couple of months. Kate had been particularly worried about Ryan. He was more like her and had a more difficult time dealing with all he had been through than Mason had, but at this point he could talk about it easily and was no longer having nightmares.

"According to my watch, it's 12:15," Jack announced, "and that's everyone's bedtime."

The children howled protests but the adults would hear none of it. Jack and Tony herded the kids up the stairs and to their bedrooms. Ten minutes later all five children were tucked into beds. Mason and Rico were still trying to negotiate a deal to stay up later but Carmen's head had barely hit the pillow before she was asleep. Jack and Tony closed the bedroom doors and made their way quietly down the hall to their own bedrooms.

Tony stepped into the bedroom he and Michelle always used when they spent the night at the Warner's home on Puget Sound. It was smaller than some of the bedrooms but it faced the water and they particularly liked the room in the summer when they could open the French doors onto the balcony and enjoy the breeze and the sounds of the water. Tonight the room would be shut tight against a cold wind.

"Happy New Year, Sweetheart," Michelle said in low, sexy whisper. She was wearing a black lace negligee with thin straps and a V-neckline that plunged between her breasts and down to an inch or so above her navel. The soft material curved over her hips and down her legs. The lace hem touched the tops of her bare feet. In her hand she held a glass of champagne. She sipped the contents of the glass and then licked her lips seductively.

Tony nearly growled in excitement. He crossed the floor in just a few steps and took his beautiful wife in his arms. The kissed passionately; the kisses neither slow nor hurried and Michelle started to open the buttons on Tony's shirt. He guided her to the bed and lowered her to it. Soon the lights were out and they were naked under the satin sheets making love and drinking champagne.

Two rooms away Jack and Kate were playing out a similar scene in one of the larger bedrooms. Jack stoked the fire in the marble fireplace and poured the champagne while Kate was in the attached bathroom getting ready for bed. She emerged from the bathroom in a short, lacy navy blue nightgown with a matching robe. They didn't make it to the bed, but made love on the chaise in front of the fireplace.

An hour later both couples were curled up in their beds exhausted from the long, busy day and the intense lovemaking. In the smaller room, Tony and Michelle were curled up on their sides; his front against her back. Tony's arm was around her and their fingers were entwined. By her slow, steady breathing, Tony knew that Michelle was sound asleep. He lay there in the darkness, nestled under the sheet and the down comforter amazed that life could be this good. They had been through a difficult year, but it was over and the result was a better, stronger union. Some marriages would have dissolved under the stress, but they were better for it. Tony pressed a kiss into Michelle's hair and allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

After making love in front of the fire, Kate and Jack made their way to bed. Jack was stretched out on his back while Kate lay on her side with her head propped on Jack's chest. The room was warm from the fire, so the covers were pulled only up to their waists. Jack stroked Kate's back tenderly. He had meant it sincerely the day he was shot when he reminded Kate that he had told her early in their relationship not to fall in love with him. Eleven years after they were married and nearly 14 years since they first met, he still couldn't believe that he was lucky enough to have found Kate and that she had, against his best advice, fallen in love with him. He had been floundering under the weight of guilt over Teri's death, a heroin addiction and the work at CTU that was slowly draining the life from him. Kate saved him. She gave him two precious sons and her constant love. She gave him his life back in a way that was far better than it had ever been in the past. He kissed the top of her head and pulled her a little closer to him. In her sleep, Kate sighed and stretched and settled back into a sound sleep.

The New Year was barely an hour old but to the Bauers and the Almeidas it held much promise: the promise of love and family, of friendship and laughter and endless adventure. What more could they ask of this year to come?


End file.
